Containing SARS
As SARS continues to haunt the globe, much work remains to be done before the world can breathe in peace, reports Hala Sakr
As the SARS epidemic enters its second month, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jinbao promised to mobilise all resources to fight the spread of the disease. "Every patient must be treated, every contagious source must be segregated and every potential risk must be eradicated. No formality or pretence is allowed," Xinhua news agency quoted China's premier on its Web site on Sunday, 11 April. He warned officials that they would be held accountable for any negligence regarding the disease.
Meanwhile on the previous day, a spokesman for the World Health Organisation (WHO) praised China's efforts to contain SARS, although the WHO still needed more information to track the spread of the virus within the Chinese population, reported the BBC news online.
The epidemic has claimed at least 240 lives in China to date, and more than two- thirds of the world's 7,000 SARS patients are Chinese.
Jinbao spelled out fears of increased spread of the deadly virus into densely populated rural areas of China where the health services might not be able to cope with a major outbreak.
Various measures have been employed in the ardent attempts to curb the epidemic. On Saturday, 10 April, an anti-spitting campaign came into effect in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong province where SARS first appeared in November 2002. Over 1,000 sanitary workers were roaming the streets to enforce the law, said the Xinhua news agency, and people found spitting were to be fined, as were people found disposing of cigarette butts, chewing gum or urinating in public places.
The SARS virus is believed to spread mainly through air droplets expelled during coughing and sneezing. After examining genetic material from samples of the virus found in the stools and urine of patients, the WHO announced that the organism can live for days in human waste.
SARS hospitals and quarantine centres have been set up as part of official efforts to curb the spread. The first SARS hospital, the Xiaotangshan hospital, was established at the beginning of May in northern Beijing.
Meanwhile in Europe, EU health ministers held an extraordinary meeting in Brussels on 6 May to look into a common strategy to handle the SARS virus. A day before, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis suggested including health in the EU constitution. "Until now ... there was a strong tendency to consider health questions as national issues, and there is no possibility for a supranational policy or intervention on health," he said. "There must be coordination, we must face it together to avoid the danger," he said.
The EU ministers agreed to spend an additional 20 million euros on research into SARS. However they backed away from a proposal to screen travellers from areas affected by the disease. Officials said that the idea was supported by Italy, but Germany and other countries opposed it.
Gro Harlem Bruntland, WHO's director- general, earlier said that although SARS had been contained in Vietnam and was retreating from Canada, it was still too early to say whether its spread was slowing worldwide.
Nevertheless, Dick Thompson, communications officer of WHO's communicable diseases division, said that the control of SARS in Vietnam has shown that even basic techniques in a country with limited health resources can control an outbreak. "There is nothing biological that says it can't be done ... [We] believe nothing stands in our way except a whole lot of work," he said.
In an effort to stem the spread of the disease, the WHO recommended postponing non-essential journeys to "several areas in China, namely: Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangdong, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Taipei and Tianjin". It also recommended the screening of travellers departing from infected areas, such as Toronto, Bejing, Guangdong and Shanxi provinces, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
The most important message for international travellers, according to WHO, was to be conscious of the main symptoms: high fever (above 38 degrees Celsius, 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit), dry cough, shortness of breath or breathing difficulties. "Persons who experience these symptoms and who have been in an area where there has been recent local transmission of SARS in the last 10 days are advised to contact a doctor."
The consequent heavy drop in the number of travellers has hit the airline industry hard. The impact of SARS "has been much more relevant for the airline industry than what happened in the Iraq war," said Giovanni Bisignani, director-general of the International Air Transport Association group (IATA). The losses have been tremendous this year, "... from what we have seen up to now... the losses... could be [more] than six billion dollars."
As doctors and scientists worldwide strive to find a treatment for SARS, which has killed about 525 people around the world, several Web sites have posted information claiming to prevent or treat the disease. Some are offering herbal supplements. Others are selling SARS protection kits including purifiers, gloves, masks and alcohol wipes. According to BBC News online, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that there was no scientific basis for such claims. Howard Beales, director of FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said that, "no products have been found effective in preventing, treating or curing SARS." Seven promotions for SARS products were sent to the FTC. The operators were warned by the authorised agencies that making such claims without rigorous scientific backing was illegal.
"... [This] can actually make matters worse by providing a false sense of protection," said Mark MacClellan, commissioner of food and drugs.
Nadia Teleb, medical officer for Surveillance and Response at the Eastern Mediterranean office of WHO told Al-Ahram Weekly that, "any treatment should first be field-tested and evaluated before it becomes part of WHO's drug policy."
Everything should be scientifically based, she said, "this is not a matter of talk, it is a matter of science."
