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Sars: A tale of two cities
08/04/2003 09:09 - (SA)
Guangzhou - In the former British colony Hong Kong, a protective mask has become more important than a credit card. Few leave home without it.
Across the border in mainland China's Guangdong province, hardly anyone wears them.
It is one of the strangest scenes in the worldwide crisis caused by the disease, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars).
Hong Kong and Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, are the two worst affected cities in the global outbreak, but while one dons, the other does not.
Even the four experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) helping find the cause of the disease have not been seen wearing a mask since their arrival on Thursday in Guangzhou, where more people have been killed and infected than any other in the world.
Asked why they were not protected, team members were speechless.
It has to do with individual comfort and the risk on a personal level was "very small", said Alan Schnur, a WHO official based in Beijing who is travelling with the team.
"That's why I'm not wearing a mask," he said.
It is also unclear how effective a mask is.
"The mask can be very useful," WHO team spokesperson Chris Powell said, but added that it may be useless if people touch the mask and then touch their face or if they touch infected surfaces.
James Maguire, a WHO team member, said he wore a mask when he went into a hospital ward housing Sars patients, but he took it off after leaving, even though he was still standing on hospital grounds.
Forty-three people are reported by the government to have died from Sars in Guangdong province, while Hong Kong's death toll has reached 23.
While the number of new cases are climbing in Hong Kong, the growth in Guangzhou cases is reported to be slowing.
Local health officials said the disease was under control in Guangzhou, but new cases were still being reported.
But the difference in the way people on the two sides of the border see the crisis reflects the fact that they are quite different in their mentality despite sharing a common Cantonese dialect, culture and booming trade.
Hong Kong residents are exposed to a free media, with an amazingly large number of TV stations and newspapers in a city that is relatively small in size.
Residents in Guangdong, on the other hand, receive only the news the government allows. While they are able to see TV broadcasts from Hong Kong, most of the news is about Hong Kong, not their city.
Some Guangzhou people scoffed at their fellow Cantonese in Hong Kong.
"In Hong Kong, they are always getting paranoid about any little thing. They bring trouble on themselves by panicking. Now everybody is scared and nobody wants to go there," said Tang Jingmin, a Guangzhou woman.
Experts do not yet know why the number of new cases in Guangzhou has declined. The disease could have peaked in the city, but some observers question whether China's figures are accurate.
Some local Guangzhou people, however, have their own theories.
"Hong Kong is so small and so crowded. Their air is not as good as ours," said Tang.
Guangzhou is much less densely populated because it is less developed and more spread out, even though its population of 10 million is higher than that of Hong Kong.
Even hospitals in the two cities are different.
"The hospitals in Hong Kong are all closed up. They don't have windows that open. They use air conditioning. Here, all of our windows and doors are left wide open and after installing fans, the number of cases went down," said Mai Weilin, a SARS patient recovering from his hospital bed in Guangzhou.
Hong Kong reporters covering the WHO team's visit arrived last week wearing masks, but even they have begun doing what the locals do - going mask-less.
"After we've been here a couple of days, I just feel more at ease, but keep in mind, I still wear it in the high risk areas - such as when I'm going to a hospital or getting in a taxi," said one Hong Kong journalist. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA
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