Indonesia seeks prompt joint actions to eradicate SARS
Indonesia seeks prompt joint actions to eradicate SARS
Fabiola Desy Unidjaja and Moch. N. Kurniawan, The Jakarta Post, Bangkok/Jakarta
President Megawati Soekarnoputri urged on Tuesday for quick, concerted measures to deal with the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), warning that the pandemic could endanger regional stability.
Addressing the Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) emergency summit on the disease in Bangkok, Megawati underlined the need to establish a task force to cope with the disease.
"SARS, which is no respecter of national boundaries, and is so virulent and contagious, should be dealt with quickly and with all the vigor and judiciousness that we can muster," she said at the summit.
The President further suggested that an ASEAN ad hoc task force be established to deal with the problem, which would then be dissolved when SARS was brought under control.
"Its mission (would be) to submit recommendations for technical measures that would prevent and manage the spread of the disease," she suggested.
ASEAN plus Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao attended the one-day emergency summit as the disease posed a threat to the region's economy.
The disease has battered the tourism industry and affected regional economic growth, which has not fully recovered from the 1997 economic crisis.
Indonesian finance minister Boediono had earlier said that the outbreak of the disease would make it impossible for the country to reach an economic growth target of four percent.
At the summit, Megawati said that the worsening economic trend would finally endanger regional stability as massive unemployment would likely follow the economic slump.
"Statistics show an average 13 percent decline in the number of foreign tourists to Indonesia in the first quarter of 2003 compared to the same period in 2002," she said.
Indonesia has reported a cumulative number of three probable SARS cases, one of whom, a Taiwanese citizen, died on Sunday.
Megawati underlined that there should be a standardized quarantine system in the region and equal treatment for all patients, regardless of their citizenship.
In Jakarta, the World Health Organization (WHO) expressed confidence that Indonesia would be able to contain the spread of SARS despite its first fatality.
"I am confident about the current measures taken by the government of Indonesia as the measures have followed WHO's guidelines," Steven Bjorg, a senior official at WHO's representative office in Jakarta, told the Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
The government has issued a number of guidelines to contain SARS at airports and seaports, at hospitals and in the community.
Earlier this month, WHO had also praised the government's measures against SARS, despite mounting criticism that the government was slow in taking necessary steps to contain SARS.
Bjorg said as long as there was no outbreak of SARS in Indonesia, the most effective measure against SARS was still at airports and seaports as the disease was imported from SARS- affected countries.
"Airports and seaports here must still remain on high alert regarding people coming from SARS-affected areas," Bjorg said.
Bjorg said it was not necessary to focus SARS measures to cover the ethnic-Chinese neighborhoods, although all probable SARS cases here were of Chinese ethnicity.
"It will be an overreaction as the country has no local chains of transmission," he said.