AFP: China ignores calls for greater transparency over SARS

(Clearwisdom.net) BEIJING, April 17 (AFP) - China appeared to ignore Thursday urgent demands by the World Health Organization (WHO) that it better report and publicize the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Health officials announced 13 new cases of the respiratory disease, but none were in Beijing where WHO experts Wednesday estimated up to 200 cases of the pneumonia-like disease could be lurking.

The WHO also believes more than 1,000 patients are "under observation" for the deadly disease in the Chinese capital.

Beijing has officially reported 40 cases in the capital with four fatalities and again refused Thursday to acknowledge its figures were inaccurate.

"I think the Ministry of Health is working hard to make these figures accurate to enable relevant departments to make better further judgment and prevention," was as far as foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao was prepared to go.

The WHO estimates however are just that, given what they say is the lack of openness at Beijing hospitals and an inadequate SARS surveillance and reporting system.

Officials at China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) refused Thursday to issue new numbers other those that the health ministry had handed over to WHO.

The WHO has demanded an urgent improvement in the nation's SARS surveillance system and more open and accurate reporting on the epidemic by the government.

The state-controlled press however largely ignored this Thursday, failing to report the WHO's concerns or its estimates on cases in Beijing.

European Union commissioner Chris Patten joined growing international condemnation of China, telling it Thursday to come clean about the extent of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Patten, Hong Kong's last governor before the territory was handed over to China in 1997, said Beijing had to be more upfront.

"I hope this will be the last occasion on which the international community will have to call for much greater transparency from China," he said in Sydney.

"I don't think they have told everything that has happened with SARS."

In an apparent response to the global condemnation of Beijing's actions over SARS, foreign journalists Thursday were taken on a tour of several hospitals and medical clinics, but doctors refused to diverge from the government's official numbers.

Of the 13 new cases reported Thursday, nine were in southern Guangdong province where the disease first emerged last November and where most of China's cases are located.

There was one new case each in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia Autonomous Region and southwestern Sichuan province, Jim Rademaekers, WHO information officer said.

In addition, one case was reported in Shanghai, making a total of two confirmed SARS cases in the eastern metropolis.

The case in the remote Ningxia was the first case so far reported in that region.

A second round of emergency training in SARS diagnosis and treatment for doctors and medical workers nationwide was meanwhile announced to take place in Beijing Thursday and Friday, state media said.

China is the region worst affected by the SARS virus, which has spread rapidly around the world in the past two months killing more than 160 people and infecting over 3,000.

Chinese medical officials claim that as SARS is a newly discovered disease, it has been difficult to differentiate SARS symptoms from other forms of respiratory diseases and pneumonia, leading to the slow response in identifying and treating the illness.

http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/an/Qhealth-pneumonia-china.RgzN_DAH.html