Govt imposes travel ban on SARS patients

Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government decided on Tuesday to impose a travel ban on suspected Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) cases in an attempt to control the spread of the disease, which has claimed more than 200 hundred lives worldwide.

Under the ban, all those suspected of being infected with SARS will be obliged to receive medical treatment at the government's expense and spend 14 days in home quarantine or post-hospital treatment.

The director general for communicable diseases at the Ministry of Health, Umar Fahmi Achmadi, said his office had delivered the list of suspected SARS cases to the Immigration Office to prevent them from traveling abroad.

"This measure is necessary to control SARS in Indonesia. The departure of the Briton who wa suspected of having SARS was the first and last time this will happen," he said after a meeting involving the relevant ministries.

The Briton, whose identity has been kept confidential, fled to Hong Kong recently although the medical team who treated him at the Suliyanti Saroso Infectious Disease Hospital in Sunter, North Jakarta, advised him not to do so until he was declared free of SARS.

The Briton was the only SARS case confirmed here, and placed Indonesia on the World Health Organization (WHO) list of countries hit by SARS.

Health workers at the ministry have been closely monitoring around 100 people in Tangerang who had physical contact with the Briton.

Umar said that in addition, it would be mandatory for travelers who entered the country and who were suspected of being infected with SARS to go directly to the hospital for a medical checkup and treatment.

Another suspect also escaped from a hospital in Bali, but he was later declared free of the disease.

The government is worried about the epidemic because at present there are around 7,000 foreigners from SARS-infected countries, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Canada, working in Indonesia.

Apart from the Briton, so far no one else has been confirmed as being infected by SARS.

Meanwhile, Minister of Health Achmad Sujudi said that President Megawati Soekarnoputri would attend a summit meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 29 to evaluate the handling of the SARS crisis in the region.

He also said he would attend a ministerial meeting on SARS in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, later this week.

Meanwhile, Agence France Presse reported that Southeast Asian health ministers would gather in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday for a meeting to discuss ways of combating the SARS virus.

Health Minister Chua Jui Meng said ministers from China, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan have also been invited to the meeting, which would be opened by acting Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.