Official defends government's handling of SARS

Many people consider the measures taken by the government to prevent the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Indonesia to be inadequate. The government, however, has brushed aside these criticisms.

The director general for environmental health and the eradication of communicable diseases, Umar Fahmi Achmadi, who has crafted the country's response to the SARS threat, spoke with The Jakarta Post's Moch. N. Kurniawan about how the government is handling the disease.

Question: How does the government view SARS?

Answer: Principally, we do not want to make people panic but at the same time we do not want to hide information. This is a new disease and there is still no cure. What we can do is learn from the countries that have been hit hardest by SARS, such as Hong Kong, Vietnam, China and Singapore.

What about complaints that the government has moved slowly in tackling SARS?

Well, let me share some facts with you. On Feb. 28, before WHO (the World Health Organization) declared SARS a worldwide threat on March 15, we notified all health clinics at air and seaports, our front lines, to be on the alert for SARS.

On March 15, I received a phone call from the WHO Jakarta office that an Indonesian was infected with SARS. We checked and found the person to be free of SARS. We informed WHO, which later removed Indonesia from the list of SARS-affected countries on March 16.

On March 16, I sent a letter to all port health clinics, immigration offices and hospitals to be well prepared for SARS, and ordered all port health clinics to distribute health alert cards to suspected SARS passengers from SARS-affected countries. Those who got a card could go to the hospital if they began to experience SARS symptoms and receive special treatment.

A day later, we held a press conference to inform the public about the SARS symptoms and issued a travel alert to suggest people not to go to SARS-affected countries. We also elaborated on our measures to minimize the spread of SARS.

We then monitored SARS developments daily and prepared a detailed SARS treatment guideline. When we heard Singapore had its first SARS death on March 27, we considered classifying it as a national epidemic threat.

We continuously checked hospitals where there were rumors of SARS patients being treated. We made public clarifications as soon as possible.

Finally, on April 3, we officially announced that SARS was a national epidemic threat. We sent more doctors to provide care to suspected SARS patients at high-risk international air and seaports, and obliged port health officials dealing with passengers coming from SARS-affected countries to wear masks. We also established special health clinics for migrant workers returning from SARS-affected countries at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. We established 17 hospitals as SARS clinics to isolate suspected SARS patients, and issued treatment guidelines for SARS patients.

Why did the announcement of SARS as a national epidemic threat come so late?

I do not think it was late. With all of the measures that we took, I object to those who have criticized us as moving too slow. We have done and are doing our best to prevent SARS from spreading.

Were there any changes made after the announcement of SARS as a national epidemic threat?

The announcement was followed by the implementation of Law No. 4/1984 on epidemic diseases, which along with Decree No. 424/2003 is an instrument to strengthen and legalize the government's measures to deal with SARS.

(An attachment to the decree includes a flowchart of how the government should handle SARS and the responsible parties at the Ministry of Health).

We have intensified our measures since then, and we feel that more people are now aware of SARS.

How is the implementation of the government's measures proceeding?

Indonesia is so big. We have been proactive in approaching regional administrations to handle SARS cases. You might find different information about suspected SARS cases, which is probably due to different time versions. We are trying to improve this.

At airports you can see some airport officials do not wear masks, but I assures you that health officials will always wear a mask as they are always in contact with passengers from SARS- affected patients.

None of us is perfect, but we are working to minimize errors in the implementation of the government's measures to deal with the SARS threat.