How Far Is Complete Victory Over SARS Away?

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, June 26, 2003

How Far Is Complete Victory Over SARS Away?

The WHO on June 24 lifted its travel advisory against Beijing and removed the city from its list of SARS-infected areas, which indicates the epidemic of SARS has basically quieted down. Nevertheless, phased victory is not the final success, humanity still has to exert greater efforts in order to thoroughly eliminate SARS and win complete victory.

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The WHO (World Health Organization) announced on June 24, that travel advisory against Beijing was lifted and that Beijing was removed from the list of SARS-infected areas. This announcement indicates that the epidemic of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) which ran rampant in Beijing for several months has basically quieted down. Nevertheless, phased victory is not the final success, humanity still has to exert greater efforts in order to thoroughly eliminate SARS and win complete victory.

Earlier at the WHO global conference on SARS between June 17 and 18, officials and experts of the WHO and the health departments of various countries had warned that one must not hastily say "defeating SARS". In its report published on June 19, WHO pointed out that according to historical experience, the eradication of an infectious disease must all meet the following three standards: First, the possession of effective means to destroy the spread of the disease, and vaccine is the most ideal means; second, the possession of easily used, sensitive and purposeful diagnostic tools; and third, destruction of the transmission chain of pathogen.

The report said that analyzed in accordance with the above-mentioned three requirements, defeating SARS remains a long-term goal. Comments by other experts confirmed from different angles the above-mentioned judgment. Director-general Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland of WHO said the world had "temporarily controlled the present epidemic". Chinese infectious disease expert Zhong Nanshan also pointed out that the present-stage achievement could only be termed as "containing SARS".

First, in the aspect of the means used for controlling SARS, now various countries generally adopt the method of social prevention and control: test and isolation are used to treat suspected patients, tracing closely contacted crowds, as well as isolation observation. WHO holds that these measures are effective, but are exceedingly time-consuming, expensive and disturbing society, so very few countries can endure over a long period of time. It said that for the elimination of SARS the world must have safe, simple and cheap means to control the spread of disease, while the social means used for prevention and treatment was, in fact, a choice made at the time of a lack of vaccine. Although progress has now been made in the research on vaccine against SARS, its safety and efficiency have to be proven through a series of tests, at least one year is need to really put it into use. Experts admit that currently there is still no medicine showing its special efficiency in treating SARS. In addition, the variant of SARS virus would likely weaken the efficiency of the already developed vaccine, this has aroused experts' vigilance.

Second, in the field of diagnosis, although research institutes of various countries are engaged in the research on some purposeful diagnostic methods, at present, however, some of these methods yield results slowly, the accuracy of some methods is not high. Actual diagnosis of SARS still relies on medical workers' judgments made in accordance with clinical symptoms and by tracing the history of the patients' contacts with other people. This, to a great extent, leads to the fact that the doctors of various countries judge and diagnose patients and suspected patients by different standards, and so the statistics obtained are often not identical. For instance, for a while in the United States, SARS patients were judged in accordance with a broad definition of symptoms, its April report said there were over 300 patients, but after a strict definition was used, the number of patients dropped to several dozens.

David Heymann, a WHO executive director in charge of infectious disease, pointed out April 20 that thus far there are still no sufficient, accurate diagnostic and testing methods for SARS, and these are items which currently should be given priority, besides, an accurate and sensitive definition of symptoms is extremely decisive to avoiding overload operation of the health system. This is because inaccurate definition of symptoms would cause the isolation for treatment of numerous patients unaffected by SARS, and thus increasing the burden on the medical system. An ideal diagnosis and test not only should be quick, accurate and purposeful, but also should be simple and cheap, which can be widely used in countries with different medical and health conditions. But there is still quite a distance from this requirement.

Experts admit that currently their understanding of SARS virus is really too limited. "Possible" and "perhaps" are the terms currently most often used to describe SARS virus, this shows that they lack adequate understanding of the virus and the ways of its transmission. If virus really comes from wild animals, then it is likely to bring new difficulty in eliminating SARS. After attending the global SARS conference, Australian expert Humo Field said on June 19 that if the SARS virus comes from animals, then even the chain link between people is cut off, virus still can come again from nature, he said that the only thing to do is to reduce the opportunity of exposing oneself before virus.

It may take several years' time to fully know a pathogen. In the 80s of the 20th century, aids was being appraised as a new infectious disease, then the virus was separated from it, but it is only till this year that scientists have deduced that the virus of aids came from ape to human beings. Although people have come to understand SARS at an unprecedented rate, it still takes time to see through the virus.

Broom, president of the Harvard School of Public Health, wrote a commentary published in the magazine, Science, in which he said: The characteristic of infectious disease is that it is unpredictable. He said: on the premise of the lack of effective vaccine and medicine, SARS, flu and other respiratory diseases must be treated with exceeding seriousness. WHO Director-general Brundtland also indicated that no one can foretell whether SARA will break out again or not. Toronto of Canada hastily lowered its guard and thus paid a tragic price serves as an instance . Facts show that prematurely saying "complete victory" over SARS may possibly bury the seeds of carelessness and oversight, because virus may possibly stage a comeback. Humans should understand that a complete elimination of SARS still needs more patience, courage, wisdom and resources.

By People's Daily Online

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