Peak SARS Incidence Has Ended in China: Official

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Peak SARS Incidence Has Ended in China: Official

At the 56th WHA (World Health Assembly) held in Geneva, Chinese Vice-health Minister Ma Xiaowei pointed out on May 20: Peak SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) has ended in China.

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At the 56th WHA (World Health Assembly) held in Geneva, Chinese Vice-health Minister Ma Xiaowei pointed out on May 20: Peak SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) has ended in China.

The peak SARS period was in February in Guangdong Province, now the incidence of the disease is very few; the peak SARS period ranged from the first 10 days of April to the first 10 days of May in Beijing, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Hebei and Tianjin, now the incidence of SARS is also in a downward stage.

By 10 am of May 21, The cumulative SARS cases rose to 5,249, while the number of SARS patients discharged from hospitals and the death toll reached 2,335 and 296, respectively.

Ma also introduced to the Assembly the concrete measures taken by China for SARS prevention and treatment:

1. Listing the management of SARS, as a statutory disease in the Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Disease, carrying out monitoring and reporting work.

2. Giving guidance to regions and departments according to the different degrees of the epidemic situation, and adopting the method of consolidating, controlling and dealing with cases in advance.

3. Going all out to carry out rescuing and treating work, strictly controlling the infectious sources, timely receiving and treating patients; controlling the flow of patients by setting up quarantine stations in airport, railways stations and ports.

4. Strengthening the exchange of related information on the epidemic.

5. Do a good job in the preventive work in frontier regions, instituting free medical treatment for farmer SARS patients.

6. Stepping up the establishment of an emergency treatment mechanism for coping with sudden outbreak of public health cases.

7. Establishing an anti-SARS cooperative mechanism with Hong Kong and Macao, providing Taiwan with related information and carrying out technological exchanges, strengthening cooperation with the international community, drawing on advanced foreign experiences; actively cooperating with the WHO, the ASEAN and the United States.

Chinese Vice-Premier and Health Minister Wu Yi said Tuesday at the General Debate of 56th WHA that the Chinese government stands ready to cooperate sincerely with other countries and will shoulder its responsibility and play a constructive role in fighting all global diseases.

She said that globalization has increasingly turned the homeland of mankind into a global village, where the issue of public health knows no national boundaries.

Once a crisis breaks out, complaining or blaming others does not help, she said, stressing that mutual understanding, close cooperation and joint counter-measures are the only solutions to any crisis.

The World Health Organization (WHO) should play a more important role in global health affairs and the international community must strengthen their cooperation in this regard, the vice-premier said.

WHO should also play a greater role in information exchange, personnel training, technical support and resources exploitation in the combat against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), she added.

Wu reiterated that it is necessary to set up a global SARS control fund, to which China is ready to make its contribution.

She also noted that it is essential to establish and improve a global contingency mechanism and upgrade the capacity to cope with global diseases.

Countries should establish and improve a network of epidemic monitoring, prevention, treatment and information exchange, she added.

The World Health Organization said Tuesday as it expressed wary optimism that China could contain the respiratory disease, although it might take as long as a year.

Dr. Henk Bekedam said he was encouraged by the trend in China, where he is the WHO's representative in Beijing, and by that government's political commitment and mobilization of health workers to fight the new respiratory disease.

The experience of carrying out measures to detect SARS and control the infection in areas with large numbers of cases shows that "you can contain" SARS, Dr. Bekedam told reporters by telephone from Geneva where the WHO is holding its annual meeting.

Dr. Bekedam said that after listening to scientists brief delegates from the WHO's 192 members he "did not believe that SARS should become endemic" in China.

He said he expected new SARS cases to appear in China for six months, maybe even a year. He also cautioned that experience had shown that if vigilance slipped, one case could lead to scores of others.

The most urgent need is improved infection control, Dr. Bekedam said. "If your hospital infection control is not in order, then instead of controlling it, you are spreading the disease," he said.

But to prevent spread, China needs donations of medical equipment like masks and other protective gear for health workers as well as mechanical ventilators, Dr. Bekedam said.

Other urgent needs include improving the infrastructure of the Chinese health system, which has been weakened over the last 10 to 20 years as the Chinese government has focused on economic development and invested less in public health.

By People's Daily Online

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