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Cooperation critical to control spread of SARS

Taiwan's top health official has urged China to fully cooperate with the World Health Organization (WHO) in containing the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Twu Shiing-jer (涂醒哲), head of the Department of Health (DOH), made the appeal yesterday at an international symposium on the potentially deadly disease.

Twu said that although China has sacked its health minister, Zhang Wenkang (張文康), and Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong (孟學農) after reporting an alarming spike in SARS deaths and probable cases in the capital, it remains uncertain whether authorities will from now on maintain full transparency regarding all relevant information.

Noting that cooperation among all nations is critical to epidemic control in this era of globalization, Twu said he hopes that China will fully cooperate with the WHO and with all other countries in order to keep this highly infectious disease at bay.

Twu also expressed regret over the WHO's continued snubbing of Taiwan for political reasons. Twu said the WHO had alerted Singapore and other Asian countries before it issued a formal warning against SARS.

In contrast, Twu said, Taiwan could only obtain relevant information from the WHO's Internet Web site.

The WHO has so far not sent any experts to assist Taiwan in combating the disease.

Because of Beijing's opposition, Taiwan has been shut out of the WHO over the past decades. Twu took advantage of the occasion to plead for Taiwan's admission into the WHO, saying that no country around the world should be excluded from the global health system and anti-epidemic network.

The International Symposium on SARS, which opened at the Taipei International Convention Center Sunday for a two-day run, has been organized by the DOH for health officials, medical professionals and epidemiology experts to share their experiences in containing the SARS virus.

During the session yesterday, both a Hong Kong scholar and a local doctor pointed out that ribavirin, an anti-viral drug, is not effective in treating SARS patients.

Dr Joseph Sun, a pathologist from the University of Hong Kong, and Hsueh Po-jen (薛博仁), a doctor at National Taiwan University (NTU) Hospital, said that ribavirin cannot effectively contain the cell-to-cell spread of the SARS virus in the bodies of patients.

Both Taiwan and Hong Kong hospitals have used ribavirin and steroids to treat SARS patients. In Taiwan, doctors have also used immunoglobulin to help enhance the immune system of patients. The flu-like disease has so far claimed 81 lives in Hong Kong, while only one death from SARS has been reported in Taiwan.

Dr Sun said the disease's fatality rate is about 5 percent in Hong Kong.

Most of those who have died in Hong Kong were elderly people, Sun said, adding that many of them were already in critical condition when they were sent to hospital.

Hsueh said NTU Hospital has treated four critically ill SARS patients. "We believe that immunoglobulin has played an important role in helping them survive the disease by reinforcing their immune systems," he added.

Immunoglobulin is a very expensive drug. It takes NT$200,000 to NT$300,000 worth of immunoglobulin to treat a single patient.

A total of 16 scholars and experts from 12 countries and areas -- including Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Britain and the US -- are attending the seminar.

During the Sunday session, they praised Taiwan's achievements in containing the outbreak.

Su Yi-jen (蘇益仁), a division chief at Taiwan's National Health Research Institute, said Taiwan has managed to achieve its goals of zero cross-border transmission and zero community transmission in SARS control.

Nevertheless, he said, Taiwan has lagged behind in the SARS virus research due to lack of advanced research facilities.

translated By Sofia Wu
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