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EAST ASIA: Fear of SARS Results in ‘Suspects’ Treated as Outcasts

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 8 2003 (IPS) - With fear gripping East Asia over the rapidly spreading atypical pneumonia that has killed 100 people by this week, a steady cough or few sneezes in public can be a ticket to ostracism.

With fear gripping East Asia over the rapidly spreading atypical pneumonia that has killed 100 people by this week, a steady cough or few sneezes in public can be a ticket to ostracism.

Or as the airline staff on board Thailand’s national carrier are quickly learning, being identified as one who served a flight from high-risk countries such as China or Singapore is enough for them to be treated as outcasts.

”Thai people now look at us as if we were ghosts,” a male flight attendant had written on a Thai Airways website for the cabin crew, revealed a local daily newspaper. ”We are treated like the plague because of poor communications and overreaction by the Thai government.”

But such treatment of people ”suspected” of having caught Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is not unique to Thailand. In Hong Kong, hotels are turning away guests from mainland China.

In Singapore, health workers seen in public in their white uniforms are being shunned due to news reports that say that among those infected by the killer virus are nurses and medical staff who have treated SARS patients in East Asia.

As of Tuesday, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), China continues to be the worst hit, with 1,268 cases and 53 deaths, followed by Hong Kong, with 883 cases and 23 deaths. Meanwhile Singapore, with 106 cases and eight deaths, is fourth after Canada, with 217 cases and nine deaths.

Thailand, on the other hand, has seven recorded cases and two SARS-related deaths.

”Ostracism is becoming a reality. We need to do something more,” says Bjorn Melgaard, the U.N. health agency’s representative in Thailand. ”The WHO has guidelines for those infected with SARS to follow.”

Health experts in the region are admitting that the panic now in motion is being fuelled by the widespread nature of SARS, which has, since it was announced to the world in early March, spread to 20 countries. Currently, all continents but Africa have had to handle a SARS case.

There are more than 2,600 cases of SARS worldwide so far.

A patient treated by a WHO infectious-diseases expert in late February was the one who attracted global attention. However, the roots of this killer virus can be traced to China, where officials had kept silent about the signs of a deadly atypical pneumonia noticed in November 2002.

Since SARS was detected, only four percent of those infected by it have died, experts point out as they try to counter the panic around the disease. By contrast, the Ebola fever that has been raging for some years has been more deadly, with at least 90 percent of those infected dying due to the disease.

But this has done little to quell the panic and the accompanying discrimination that people ”suspected” of SARS are experiencing.

It is more virulent than what happened during the two previous occasions when Asia was hit by killer diseases. They were the 1994 pneumonic plague that hit Surat, in India, and the avian flu that struck Hong Kong mid-1997 through early 1998.

”This is because SARS is spreading faster,” says Melgaard.

When the at-first mysterious plague hit the western port city of Surat, people fled by the thousands to nearby cities. Masks were soon worn by people in these urban areas given that 47 people died due to the plague.

However, similar panic did not surface when reports appeared that the pneumonic plague had killed four people in two of India’s northern states – Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal – in February last year.

In countries like Thailand, some quarters are questioning the government’s role in contributing to the panic and the consequent discrimination.

The government has not met ”public expectations,” declared ‘The Nation’, an English-language daily newspaper, in an editorial on Sunday. ”There was no ‘war room’ or a unified leadership to handle the crisis, which requires day-to-day articulation.”

There is also fear among Thailand’s public health experts that further discrimination could force people infected with SARS to stay away from visiting hospitals out of fear of discrimination.

On Monday, the Thai government addressed some of the worries that have arisen since the SARS panic hit this country this month, including the question over whether one should wear or not wear a face mask to stay safe.

Masks are not necessary, Thai officials asserted, a view backed by the WHO. According to the Geneva-based U.N. agency, masks are best worn only by those infected with SARS or those who suspect they are infected with the virus, thus limiting the spread of the disease.

”I don’t want to see our whole nation becoming unnecessarily worried about an illness,” Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Monday.

As a sign of the country’s increasing confidence that it is safe from local transmission of SARS unlike China, Hong Kong, Singapore or Vietnam – a concert featuring the legendary British rock band the Rolling Stones is scheduled to be held this week.

Yet that has not quelled the prejudice faced by people either related to or who have come into close contact with SARS patients. On Tuesday, ‘The Nation’ drew attention to the discrimination suffered by the grandchildren of a Thai man who died of SARS last week.

The grandchildren have been ”ostracised” by their community, a provincial health inspector told the paper. ”They cannot earn a living a living now, as people dare not buy the food the sell for fear of contracting the disease.”