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Taipei holds SARS commemoration

It's been four years since the SARS outbreak panicked the nation and a commemoration of the crisis took place yesterday at Songshan Armed Forces General Hospital, the first hospital designated exclusively to take care of SARS patients during the epidemic.

The epidemic claimed 73 lives and caused an estimated NT$100 billion (US$3 billion) in economic damage, Minister of Foreign Affairs James Huang (黃志芳) said, who used the occasion to highlight the seriousness of Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO.

"SARS crossed national boarders. It is a reminder that we live in an interdependent world, but Taiwan was excluded from the international medical network," he said. "It is with great indignation that I watched China use every means possible to block help for Taiwan from the WHO [during the epidemic]."

Taiwan's medical community bore the brunt of the danger during the epidemic as they continued to care for patients while schools and offices closed and people stayed inside their homes.

For Hsu Tzu-ling (徐子玲), a senior nurse at the Department of Health's Taipei Hospital, those traumatic days are still vivid four years later.

"We were all aware of the risks, but I am proud to say that everybody on my team turned up to do our jobs every day," she said.

Hsu remembered the climate of fear in Taipei during the crisis.

"We did not go back to our homes in order to protect our families, but my child was shunned by others at school because his mother was a nurse," she said.

Another nurse, Wang Li (王麗) of Shinkong Hospital described the chaotic days of the SARS epidemic.

"Taipei was a ghost town. Alongside those who perished, there are many who still suffer physical and psychological damage to this day," she said.

Later, at a separate event last night, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) lashed out at the WHO Secretariat for returning his first letter to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) by sticking it, in the middle of the night, into the gap between a door and its frame at Taiwan's representative office in Geneva.

"It's outrageous that [the WHO Secretariat] treated us like this," Chen said in an interview on SET-TV.

After the first letter asking that the country be allowed to join the health body was rejected, Chen said he had written "a second letter, a third letter."

After the country's allies in Geneva passed his letters on to the WHO Secretariat, Chen said the WHO had received Taiwan's request.

Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan
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