ADB grants $4m to fight SARS

ADB grants $4m to fight SARS

Agence France-Presse, Manila

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved technical assistance grants totaling US$4 million to prevent the spread of SARS in China and several other countries in Asia-Pacific.

A US$2 million grant will go to preventing the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the Chinese provinces of Ningxia, Qinghai, Xinjiang and Yunnan, ADB officials said.

A second grant, also worth $2 million, will support similar efforts in other Asia-Pacific countries.

Geert Van Der Linden, special adviser to the ADB president, said that the second grant could be increased to $5 million if there is a great need and if they find the money is being used properly.

ADB director Bradford Philips stressed that any ADB member country can submit proposals for projects to be funded by the grant, including countries which still have not recorded any cases of SARS.

So far, Laos has already started negotiations for some funding.

Other countries were keeping their negotiations under wraps to avoid bad publicity, Philips said, remarking "you don't want to have a SARS campaign when there is no SARS."

ADB senior director William Fraser also stressed that there were few SARS cases in the four Chinese provinces covered by the grant to China but that the ADB believed they warranted special attention because they bordered Central Asian countries.

The ADB officials said that the grants were intended to keep SARS from reaching new areas and to prepare areas to deal with the threat.

They said there was no need for panic over SARS as experience showed it can be contained.

China has been the hardest-hit by the SARS crisis which has claimed over 700 lives and resulted in more than 8,000 infections worldwide.

The ADB had warned recently that if SARS was not brought under control by end-June, economic growth could be affected.

It said the damage to China and the other Northeast Asian economies would be $8.8 billion if the problem was not contained by mid-year while the Southeast Asian economies could lose $3.2 billion.

Philips said that economic growth in the first quarter of the year had been good. The SARS outbreak was first detected in China in November last year but became much more apparent in March.