On Thursday night, the Department of Health designated severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) as a contagious disease. Now that the public health system has declared war on the disease, both the central and local government authorities will be able to impose compulsory quarantine measures on suspected SARS patients and public venues such as airports and train stations. This will be a great help in the fight against the disease.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications has rejected a proposal from opposition lawmakers calling for charter flights for Taiwanese businesspeople in China. The reason they cited for such flights -- that they would reduce the risk of infection in Hong Kong, which has been declared a SARS affected area -- is completely ridiculous.
Moreover, the six new SARS cases discovered in Taiwan on Wednesday are suspected to have originated in Beijing while visitors were there on business. This shows that China's SARS-affected areas are no longer limited to Hong Kong, Guangdong or other areas along the southeast coast. The disease has spread to Beijing and renders the call for charter flights meaningless. Because clear demarcation of China's SARS-affected areas is no longer possible, and because preventive measures on planes cannot guarantee that one will not contract the disease before boarding a flight, the call for charter flights is meaningless.
After reports of mysterious pneumonia came out from Guangdong Province in November last year, the Chinese authorities imposed a news blackout on the outbreak, which coincided with the Chinese Communist Party's 16th National Congress. As a result, the outbreak spun out of control.
In an era of convenient travel, SARS is transmitted on the wings of a plane. It has been spreading within China for at least four months, yet China never notified the WHO. Even now, Beijing refuses to let experts from the WHO investigate conditions inside China. This attitude is the greatest obstacle to controlling the epidemic. In contrast to China's resistance, Taiwan notified the WHO immediately after discovering suspicious cases of pneumonia and adopted measures to quarantine patients, but these efforts met with politically motivated official indifference on the part of the WHO. How utterly unfair. No wonder US Congressmen have spoken out against the WHO's exclusion of Taiwan.
The Department of Health and Taipei City's Bureau of Health had some differences of opinion over emergency measures to control the spread of SARS. But both the Department of Health and Taipei City forgot the biggest hole in Taiwan's armor against the epidemic -- China. All of Taiwan's SARS cases originated in China. Thus unless China eradicates the spread of SARS, the only way that Taiwan can cut off the source of infection is by adopting emergency measures to prevent contact with China. This newspaper recommends that Taiwan temporarily suspend all travel between Taiwan and China for purposes of tourism or commerce.
China has refused to cooperate with the WHO and has refused to exchange information about SARS with other countries. Having allowed probable SARS patients to travel around the globe, China must bear the greatest responsibility for the spread of the disease. Epidemic prevention knows no borders. China's leaders should throw open their doors, allow the WHO to provide assistance, and eradicate SARS. They should allow Taiwan to join the WHO and allow all people to enjoy the same standard of humanitarian medical treatment.
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