HEALTH-CHINA: Anti-SARS Drive No Less Than a People’s War

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

BEIJING, May 2 2003 (IPS) - In a throwback to its patriotic sanitation campaigns of the 1950s, China’s Communist Party is now waging a ”People’s War” on curbing the spread of deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) here in the capital and the rest of the country.

Chinese leaders have deployed 1,200 military medical staff to help Beijing authorities fight the escalating outbreak of the virus, which is believed to have originated from China and has now sickened more than 3,500 people in some 30 countries.

Beijing’s neighbourhood committees, which are Communist Party-run groups, and the police have been enlisted to keep watch over some 12,000 people being held under quarantine.

The state-run media is in full gear, recycling stock propaganda phrases that hail the heroism of the top leadership, the selfless devotion of the ”warriors in white coats” and the decisive contribution of the People ‘s Liberation Army, especially its research laboratories.

The epidemic has now spread to 26 of China’s 31 provinces and autonomous regions, prompting the government to launch a mass mobilisation campaign calling on everyone in this country of 1.2 billion people to take part in the ”SARS battle”.

The Communist Party was undoubtedly successful at 1950s sanitation campaigns that almost wiped out syphilis and leprosy and inoculation drives against smallpox, typhoid, diphtheria, infantile paralysis, whooping cough and measles.

But with strict quarantine measures in place, stock trading suspended and entertainment and recreation curtailed, the Chinese capital is beginning to count not just the economic fallout but also the emotional cost of its draconian measures to curb the SARS outbreak.

Economic pundits have been busy revising their growth forecasts for China’s miracle economy, which posted a Gross Domestic Product growth of 8 percent last year. China closed its two stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen from May 1 to May 9 as the government tries to keep SARS out of crowded dealing rooms.

The Guangdong Fair, China’s biggest, ended a day ahead of schedule, with orders worth only 4.42 billion U.S. dollars, just a quarter of the 16.8 billion dollars booked last year.

A group of academics at Beijing University now predicts that SARS will cut between one and two percentage points from China’s economic growth in 2003.

Beijing University’s China Centre for Economic Research also estimates that the country’s tourism – both domestic and foreign – will lose about 140 billion yuan (16.8 billion dollars).

With the spread of SARS threatening to spin out of control, the government earlier shortened the seven-day-long May Day holiday to five days and advised people against travelling. Last year, 87 million Chinese spent 33 billion yuan (3.9 billion dollars) shopping and touring during the traditional May Day Golden Week.

By contrast, May Day this year is a holiday spent at home. Shopping centres in Beijing are forbidden from holding sales promotions. Public gatherings are discouraged and some health experts have advised newlywed couples to postpone having babies.

Outings in the surrounding countryside of Beijing have also been banned for fear that visitors from the capital might spread the disease in the impoverished rural parts of the country. ”Even swimming pools have been closed,” fumed Zhang Shengyun, a businessman who wondered how to kill the holiday time.

At least three psychological counselling hotlines have been set up to help nervous Beijing residents deal with what specialists term the ”SARS – fear” syndrome.

”I received twenty phone calls in the last hour,” said a staffer for the hotline set up by the Psychological Health Institute who gave her name as Liu. ”To quarantined people who call, I tried to explain that isolation was not something aimed at them personally but a measure taken against the spread of the disease.”

More than 42 percent of capital residents feel increasingly terrified by the unabated spread of the disease, according to an official survey conducted by the Chinese Socio-economic Survey and Information Research Institute.

One of Beijing’s biggest problems is that public confidence in the health system has sunk to the lowest point. Many residents avoid going to hospitals, fearing that being held in quarantine with other suspected cases runs a greater risk of getting infected.

More than 100 SARS-treatment medical institutions have been cordoned off in Beijing as acting mayor Wang Qishan admitted that they were epicentres of epidemic.

Another 13.4 percent of people surveyed by the government think tank said they were unsure whether they approved of the strict authoritarian measures deployed to control the epidemic.

On Thursday, the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO) said China might need extra help for hospitals in the country’s poorer western and northern provinces, including facilities to isolate and treat SARS patients.

Beyond ensuring social stability in a disease-stricken capital, Beijing leaders might also have reasons to worry for their own health. A front-page article in Friday’s Guangzhou-based ‘Southern Weekend’ newspaper revealed that SARS had infiltrated the Central Party School, where 1,600 party officials are trained for top positions inside the government and the Communist Party.

Quoting an unidentified professor at the school, the paper said a librarian had been confirmed as SARS-infected and areas and people inside the school have been placed under quarantine.

China reported 11 new SARS deaths and 187 new cases by Thursday morning, the Health Ministry said. Seven of the new deaths were in Beijing. The capital also accounted for 122 of the new cases.

”The next few months will prove crucial in the attempt to contain SARS worldwide, which now greatly depends on whether the disease can be controlled in China,” a WHO update said on Thursday.