Suspected SARS case sounds alarm in Asia

Suspected SARS case sounds alarm in Asia

Agence France-Presse Penang, Malaysia/Beijing

The possible re-emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China has rung alarm bells across Asia but health officials meeting here said on Friday they were confident the deadly disease would be contained.

China's Vice Minister of Health Zhu Qinsheng briefed his colleagues from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) about a new suspected case and pledged to provide timely information.

"We will cooperate with Asian countries. We will be transparent in all our cases. We will be honest," he told reporters.

China on Friday announced four confirmed or suspected SARS cases, one of whom had died, as the disease that killed nearly 800 worldwide last year returned to haunt the country.

Health officials nationwide stepped up their alert level as the health ministry rushed to identify the source of the unexpected re-emergence of SARS in a bid to control its spread.

"Experts have reached the tentative conclusion that this outbreak can be traced back to infection by laboratory workers," the ministry said in a statement.

The statement provided a rough outline of how the disease might have spread, indicating that a laboratory inside the Center for Disease Control in Beijing may have played a key part.

One of the confirmed cases, a 26-year-old medical student identified by her surname Song, conducted research at the laboratory for two weeks last month, the ministry said.

She later returned to her home province, Anhui in eastern China, where she was hospitalized with fever and tended to by her mother, surnamed Wei.

Wei died early this week but post-mortems have not yet definitively established her as a SARS case, the ministry said.

Takashi Minagawa, councillor with Japan's ministry of health, labor and welfare, said there was no need for the public to panic.

"I think we are not afraid as compared to when SARS broke out last year. We are better prepared. We do not expect a large number of cases," he said.

Minagawa said Japan was pleased at the speed with which China revealed the case and the steps taken to isolate the people believed to be affected.

"We are happy with China's attitude. China has assured us it will provide updates of the situation in their country," he said.

China was criticized for delays in reporting the first outbreaks of SARS in late 2002. It was accused of trying to cover up the epidemic, allowing it to spread to other countries.

SARS went on to kill nearly 800 people, mostly in Asia, and infected more than 8,000 worldwide.

The latest suspected case "rings alarm bells", Indonesia's Health Minister Achmad Sujudi told reporters, but added that the region was now better prepared to respond to the disease.

"We have learnt from previous experience how to prevent it from spreading. We will operationalize our disease control mechanism," he said.

Health ministers from China, Japan and South Korea are meeting here with their Southeast Asian counterparts for the first time to adopt a common strategy to beat outbreaks of communicable diseases such as SARS and are expected to release details of the plan later Friday.

Wilfrido Villacorta, deputy ASEAN secretary-general told AFP that with the adoption of the plan, ASEAN would be better prepared to deal with future outbreaks.

"A mechanism has been developed to have a surveillance system to detect and to respond quickly to outbreaks. Basically, we are now better prepared to reduce damage. This is what we want," he said.

The World Health Organization warned earlier this year that SARS, like the outbreak this year of bird flu, remained a "major area of concern".

Bird flu affected some 10 Asian nations, killed at least 23 people and led to the culling of millions of chickens.