Ma warns frustrated hospital workers

Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday urged medical staff at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital to abide by quarantine orders after some of them tried to escape.

"Fighting SARS is like a real war," Ma said. "If there is any opposition, it will be regarded as disobeying orders on the front line."

"Although the Taipei City Government will not punish the medical staff who led the breakout immediately, we will look further into their administrative responsibilities after their quarantine is complete," he said.

The warning came after several hospital staff came out of the building in an apparent attempt to escape.

Television news showed around 20 people emerging from the hospital, some pulling down their facemasks to complain about their incarceration.

Some held banners saying, "We are willing to undergo home quarantine, but we don't want to be confined with SARS patients" and "Endless 14 days."

Deputy Mayor Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), who heads the cross-departmental SARS Emergency Response Task Force, said the staff would be identified and punished.

"We will investigate the identities of those who got out of the hospital, and if they are civil servants, they could be given a major demerit, or even fired," he said.

Despite the warnings, the city government allowed more than 40 visitors and outpatients to leave the hospital yesterday morning.

Chiu Shu-ti (邱淑媞), director of the Taipei City Department of Health, said they had been ordered to stay at home for 10 days.

There were 129 visitors and outpatients at the hospital when an across-the-board freeze on its operations was imposed Thursday, she said.

Of the total, 43 were released after they were found to be healthy and met seven conditions that health authorities imposed to make sure they posed no SARS threat.

The seven conditions are: they had not visited patients in intensive care; the patients they had visited had no fever; the visitors themselves had no fever; they had signed a document agreeing to house quarantine; they had washed their hands and wore surgical masks upon leaving; they went straight home aboard specially arranged vehicles; and they took a bath and changed their clothes immediately after getting home.

The country has reported 49 probable cases of SARS, 65 suspected cases and 21 others that have yet to be determined.

The hospital was ordered to close all its operations on Thursday, after which the city's Bureau of Health took over its administration.

All 240 patients were kept inside the hospital together with everyone else who was in the building at the time. All 930 staff members were also recalled to the hospital to be quarantined.

Police have been maintaining security around the hospital to ensure no one entered or left illegally.

But frustrations in the hospital boiled over yesterday when the staff began vociferously complaining about their treatment.

An unidentified female hospital employee yelled, "We are normal. Why should we be quarantined? Why should we take care of SARS patients?"

Another shouted, "We may be forced to jump from the building."

The staff also issued a written statement saying that because SARS patients were being kept there, everyone was at risk of eventually contracting the disease.

They also said that since the bureau had taken over the hospital, bureau staff rather than hospital staff should be taking care of the SARS patients.