The ruling DPP yesterday appealed to the public to support the government's policies to contain the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) amid protests and resistance to what some regard as Draconian measures that infringe people's rights.
"It is a time for the public to deal with SARS with a rational attitude," DPP Secretary General Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄) said after a DPP Central Standing Committee meeting. "As long as proper preventive and medical measures are taken, the disease can be brought under effective control."
Chang's comments followed several protests and incidents where the government's attempts to contain the disease were ignored or disobeyed.
In Yunlin County on Monday, hundreds of residents of Yuanchang Township protested outside the offices of a company that was dealing with medical waste from SARS patients at Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital.
And in Hsinchu City on the same day, the mayor prevented three Hoping Hospital SARS patients from being transferred to a Hsinchu hospital in a standoff that lasted several hours.
Several Hoping Hospital staff have also ignored demands to be quarantined at the hospital.
The committee also agreed on the need to pass an emergency bill proposed by the Cabinet to make funds available for mass quarantine measures being enforced at hospitals and to alleviate the impact of the disease on the economy.
"The administrative and the legislative agencies should work together to pass the bill as soon as possible, regardless of partisan divisions, to give the government more power to lead the nation out of this health crisis," Chang said.
The party also called on the press to be responsible and professional in its reporting.
"The press is responsible for efficiently and promptly providing the right messages about the government's ongoing and future measures to counter SARS to the public so as to ease unnecessary public worries," Chang said.
The Central Standing Committee yesterday also discussed how to respond to the social and economic impact of the disease.
Wu Rong-I (
"A six-month epidemic would result in a drop in revenues of between 20 and 30 percent for these industries," Wu said.
"Taiwan's export-oriented businesses that have ties with China might also suffer losses as international manufacturing orders decline," Wu added.
In a speech to a Taiwan-Japan legislative group, President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) said that China's evasiveness about SARS showed that democracy, government transparency and openness were the best ways to combat the disease.
Chen said the spread of SARS had not only endangered the lives of people living in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, but had also had a tremendous impact to the economies of these countries.
"Democracy is a universal value and the only way to solve conflicts," Chen said.
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