WHO lauds China, Taiwan fumes

A post office worker displays a new series of anti-SARS stamps in Taipei yesterday. Funds collected from the new commemorative stamps will be used to fight SARS. PHOTO: REUTERS

Presidential Office officials yesterday stuck to their assertion that Beijing was pressuring the World Health Organization (WHO) to maintain its warning on travel to Taiwan, as WHO officials in China praised Beijing for its success in controlling the SARS outbreak.

Meanwhile, health officials in Taipei said two patients at Taipei Municipal Yangming Hospital who were suspected of having SARS had died over the past two days, after two weeks in which no deaths from the disease were reported.

The news came as the government tried to persuade the WHO to lift the travel advisory after failing earlier in the week.

Presidential Office officials said that remarks by Chinese Executive Vice Health Minister Gao Qiang (高強) lent weight to suspicions that the WHO rejected Taiwan's request for the travel warning to be lifted because of pressure from Beijing.

Gao yesterday said he hoped that China and Taiwan could both be removed from the WHO's travel advisory list at the same time.

National security sources revealed last Friday that Beijing had asked the WHO to ignore requests from Taiwan to be removed from the list until it is ready to lift the travel warning for China.

"Gao Qiang's remarks yesterday confirmed our speculation that China has been blocking the lifting of Taiwan's travel advisory," a high ranking-official from the Presidential Office said yesterday.

WHO communicable disease specialist David Heymann, who was in Beijing yesterday to investigate the SARS situation there, said it was up to the agency's director-general to decide whether the travel warning on Taiwan should be lifted.

"The [WHO] director-general reviews the information on a regular basis. Based on the information we present to her and the related criteria, she makes the decision. That's all I can say," Heymann said.

Heymann, a prominent skeptic of the dramatic plunge in China's reported SARS infections, came to Beijing to investigate.

He said the WHO was able to review information in had requested from China's provinces.

"It's been informative, complete and reflects the huge effort that has been made by China to contain SARS. We are very grateful that we have this information now," he said.

Heymann said he would give the new information to WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland in Geneva today and she will decide whether to lift the travel advisory.

A WHO official hinted the warning could be lifted soon. "I think tomorrow it might be much clearer," he said.

Su Ih-jen (蘇益仁), head of Taiwan's Center for Disease Control, said earlier yesterday that the WHO had rejected the country's request for the travel advisory to be lifted because the organization's officials had "misunderstood" the SARS figures reported in Taiwan.

To have the travel warning lifted, Taiwan must report an average of fewer than five cases over the previous three days, have fewer than 60 active cases in hospital and prove that it is not exporting cases.

Su said that according to the WHO's regulations, patients are still described as active only within the first two weeks of their infection, during which they must be isolated in special wards.

He said that while 168 SARS patients were hospitalized, only 26 matched the WHO's definition.

Su said many SARS patients had recovered to the extent that they could no longer infect others, but the WHO did not take note of that.

In addition, six cases of people developing SARS symptoms abroad after being in Taiwan had not been confirmed, Su said. The test results of some of these would not be available until today, making it unlikely that the WHO would lift the travel advisory until next week.

Department of Health reported two more probable cases of SARS yesterday, raising the total to 668. The two deaths at Yangming Hospital have yet to be confirmed as related to SARS, so the official number of deaths from the disease remained at 81.