WHO Commends China for Responsible Attitude on SARS

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, June 16, 2003

WHO Commends China for Responsible Attitude on SARS

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"What Hong Kong has contributed to the global effort, I said, has been significant. It's been incredibly important," and "China's (mainland) made very well reporting ... We are, and I am, sure that China will be working closely with the WHO," said the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Executive Director for Communicable Diseases David Heymann.

For Hong Kong, he said that at a time when so much mystery has remained about severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Hong Kong's excellent clinical practices and facilities in place have contributed much to containing local infections and prevent its spread to other countries.

"Outbreak control prompted reaction, once the outbreak had been identified. (Such included) effective case identification, contact tracing, case isolation, infection control surveillance and quarantine ...

"In patient management, Hong Kong has led the way in the control trials of drugs trying to determine what will work best," Heymann commented during his short trip to Hong Kong, which ended Monday.

When it came to the subject of science, where accuracy, integrity and honesty are the cornerstones, Heymann praised both the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong for continuously reporting new cases and deaths to the WHO.

"Science has been very important here (in Hong Kong.) The coronavirus was first isolated and identified here. Some of the earliest PCR and antibody tests were developed here. Environmental factors involved in transmission were probably identified correctly -- as the sewage link. This is very important information," he said during a slide presentation Sunday.

"Hong Kong has shown the way of open and transparent reporting despite concerns on the economy," he said, pointing out that Hong Kong was no more exporting SARS cases since March 29.

And for the Chinese mainland, he is equally pleased that the WHO has secured a guarantee from the Central People's Government that China will take the responsibility of continuously reporting the SARS situation to the WHO.

"This is the guarantee we had last week in Beijing," Heymann said.

With the WHO leading the world's greatest health care interest in combating the disease, Heymann encouraged all countries in the world to promptly report the latest developments of the disease, saying, "We anticipate that as we move through the 21st century, countries will take on more of a responsibility of reporting ..."

Heymann highlighted the importance of responsible reporting, assuch is likely to provide quick clues to certain unsolved mysteries of the worldwide outbreaks of the disease at a time when the world's medical experts are earnestly searching what the source of the SARS coronavirus was.

True, Heymann did say that the virus could have been come from wildlife, but exactly what kind and how it might have jumped onto humans have remained a suspense.

"We believe it came from some type of animal in nature. We don't know if it came from only one type into human and then that the initial human was responsible for all the different human outbreaks. If that's the case, it may be that the genetic analysis can tell us that. It was not from eating the meat. It was probably from the butchering process," Heymann said.

Though Heymann was adamant that animal studies, depending on how much interest is put into these, could be done within a year, but he did warn that it would be very difficult to say what the risk factors are, as the project would call for highly detailed case control studies.

For now for the WHO, the most pressing medical questions await answering, as Heymann outlined Monday, remain such: "Is this a seasonal disease? Will it re-occur in the season where the virus remains either in people who are a symptomatic or in the environment and begins its transmission again when the season has changed?"

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