HEALTH: Pneumonia the Latest Outbreak Believed to come from China

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, Mar 20 2003 (IPS) - Just as China’s Health Minister Zhang Wenkang was insisting that he had under ”effective control” the mystery disease that has alarmed doctors around the world, fresh reports of deaths here heightened fears that China could be the hot zone for a new, international pandemic.

Two patients have been diagnosed with ”atypical pneumonia” at the Beijing People’s Hospital. In addition, two more deaths were reported at the Beijing People’s Liberation Army 302 Hospital, which unofficial sources blame on severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which has caused 11 confirmed deaths around the world.

The news circulated quickly in the international media in recent days, but was kept out of the Chinese state-controlled press, engaged at the time in praise for China’s newly anointed government. The first reports of atypical pneumonia occurred in November last year.

The Chinese government’s long-time habit of controlling bad news prevented a swift response from the world scientific community.

Any such outbreak is worrying to public health experts because there is a history of new mutations of dangerous contagious viruses originating in China. The virus that caused the 1918 influenza epidemic and killed up to 40 million people may have originated in China, as well as the dangerous ‘Asian flu’ outbreaks in 1957 and 1968.

During most winters, the world is swept by fresh strains of winter flu viruses that are often traced to China. Scientists suspect the strains develop easily in China because of its huge population, where often people live in proximity with pigs, chickens and other livestock.

These factors may enable viruses to evolve so as to mix human and genes together and also ensure that virus can quickly jump across species.

China is home to a third of the world’s pigs, and southern China, where this latest virus that causes SARS first appeared, is known as a breeding ground for earlier viruses probably because it is a centre for raising pigs and poultry for export.

These livestock are exported to the Hong Kong market and Hong Kong, which is an international and important air hub, has in the past served as the key transmission belt of viruses.

In 1997 Hong Kong was hit by the bird-flu crisis, which some experts think could have threatened a third of the world’s population if it had not been quickly checked. In the end, it killed six out of 18 people who were hospitalised by the avian flu.

Last winter, a fresh panic prompted Hong Kong officials to order the slaughter of 1.2 million birds.

Hong Kong has considerable expertise in this field. On Tuesday, a joint research team in Hong Kong from the Prince of Wales Hospital and Chinese University of Hong Kong identified the new virus as a member of the paramyxoviridae family, but said it is too early to say if it is curable or a completely new strain.

The outbreak started in China’s southern province of Guangdong in November – and it took three months for China to report it.

Two weeks ago China said 300 people had been infected and five had died. Although the disease has spread quickly across the country, there have been no further official reports but news about it has been distributed through messaging through mobile phones.

The domestic press has kept silent and editors have been told to block negative stories during the two-week long meeting of the National People’s Congress of Parliament, which approved new president, new premier and top leaders this week.

On Saturday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that the disease is a ”world-wide threat” and only when the National People’s Congress meeting ended Tuesday did China release some information.

Health Minister Zhang told the state-run Xinhua news agency that the problem had been brought ”under effective control”. He told WHO representative Henk Bekedam that the government had organised medical institutions and specialists to give ”emergency treatment”.

No more information was provided on what the treatment involved.

China is now allowing a team of WHO experts to come to the country next week to help investigate the disease.

At the same time, Xinhua quoted WHO expert Dr David Heymann as downplaying the dangers of the SARS.

”There should be no panic. This is a disease that, it seems, requires very close contact with patients and it is mainly hospital workers who have been infected in the first wave,” he said.

”I think it is just slightly more serious than the usual wave of winter flu,” asserted Zhao Wei, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine from the Chaoyang Hospital in Beijing. ”People are so used to the seasonal cough and cold that no one would have paid much attention to such a low number of deaths anyway.”

Reports said the incubation period takes seven days and begins with high fever and other flu-like symptoms. Victims typically develop coughs, pneumonia, shortness of breath, and death results from respiratory failure.