Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Headlines, Health, Latin America & the Caribbean

HEALTH-LATIN AMERICA: SARS and Its Impacts Here to Stay

Diego Cevallos - Tierramérica*

MEXICO CITY, May 6 2003 (IPS) - The presence of people wearing white laboratory coats in Latin American and Caribbean airports is growing as efforts multiply to monitor passengers in order to prevent the entry if severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). But the impacts of the disease have already reached the region – and apparently are here to stay.

Experts say it is crucial that control systems function effectively and limit the spread of the virus that produces the disease, also known as atypical pneumonia. But those attempts run into the obstacle of widespread ignorance about SARS.

To date, no Latin American government has launched an intensive information campaign about the virus or how it is spread, report Tierramérica’s correspondents in the region.

And no medication exists yet to treat this infectious disease, which has infected more than 6,700 people in 30 countries, including two in Brazil, the only Latin American country to report cases of SARS, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) May 6 update.

In Cuba, Guatemala, Peru, Mexico and Venezuela, there were more than 20 suspected cases of SARS by the end of last month, but none proved to be this much-feared disease.

Canada is the only country in the Americas where people have died from SARS: 22 people out of the 148 recorded cases have fallen victim to the disease since the first case was reported in the southern Chinese province of Guandong.

In general, Latin America and the Caribbean are taking appropriate steps to confront SARS, but it can be assured that the disease will crop up in several of the countries in the region, Joaquín Molina, representative in Mexico of the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO), said in comments to Tierramérica.

And then SARS will likely remain in the region for a long time, he added.

The illness is caused by a type of coronavirus, related to viruses that cause the common cold and certain gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases in animals, including livestock. It could be three years before a vaccine can be produced, according to scientists.

Pablo Kuri, epidemiology director at Mexico’s Health Secretariat, acknowledged the inevitability that the virus would ultimately reach his country. The challenge will be to isolate it and prevent it from spreading, just as has been done in some European countries, he said.

Most of the measures taken to prevent SARS from entering Latin American and the Caribbean, whose neighbours to the north – Canada and the United States – together report 203 cases, are focused on the airports, though they are limited.

Governments are urging their populations not to travel to areas where there is a high incidence of SARS, particularly China, where there have been 4,409 cases reported and more than 200 deaths as of the WHO’s May 6 update.

Several Latin American countries have set up special rooms in hospitals to quarantine persons infected with SARS, while health authorities are disseminating information among medical workers about the disease, which is easily transmitted through personal interaction with a carrier of the virus.

In Peru, there is a sterile ward with 20 beds at the Daniel Carrión Hospital, the closest to Lima’s international airport.

The government says it has ”a Peruvian model” for preventing SARS from entering the country, but doctors at the Health Ministry and the airport health team said they knew nothing about such a plan.

”There is only minimal awareness” in Peru about the disease, physician Lucrecia Magallanes told Tierramérica.

Guatemala is one of the few countries in Latin America that has implemented strict controls at airports. And travellers are complaining about the questioning and screening procedures.

In comments to Tierramérica, Francisco Ardón, chief of epidemiology at Guatemala’s Health Ministry, played down the complaints and assured that the security and health personnel ”do not do anything that could be construed as harassment.”

But along the Guatemala-Mexico border the flow of people in and out of the country is barely regulated, and there are many undocumented Asians among those who are headed to the United States.

In a world with so great movement of persons it is very difficult to prevent entry of any disease, noted PAHO official Molina.

SARS symptoms include high fever, cough and difficulty in breathing. The main prevention measures include avoiding contact with persons known to be infected, frequent hand washing and using a facemask.

In Brazil, despite its two confirmed cases, the situation is not much different from that of the rest of the region.

Although the government announced measures like distributing questionnaires among airline passengers – to collect data like names, point of origin, flight numbers and address in Brazil – few travellers are handing in the forms.

And even though the WHO reports that two SARS cases were confirmed in Brazil, local doctors maintain that they were probable cases, but not verified.

In Mexico, for the past several weeks there was only one doctor entrusted with distributing pamphlets with SARS information at the Mexico City airport. The authorities recently decided to assign 20 doctors to the task.

At the airport’s customs area, immigration staff have been asked to keep an eye out for arriving passengers who show any indication of respiratory illness.

The Mexican airport has also begun temporary isolation of travellers arriving from Asia, as occurred with a group of sports trainers from China.

Some hotel managers in the capital have refused to provide accommodations to tourists or business travellers coming from Asian countries.

The Mexican government says it has imposed special controls along the borders and at ports, but the medical personnel assigned to those locations, such as along the Guatemalan border, report that the measures are not being fully implemented and complain of lack of state support.

The Venezuelan government has ordered airlines to sanitise all aircraft, and in Cuba the always-strict customs and sanitary controls have been reinforced.

But none of the countries in Latin America or the Caribbean have equipment to detect the illness. As such, several governments from the region have set up agreements with U.S. scientific centres to send blood and urine samples of people suspected to have SARS.

All of these measures are minimal compared to those implemented in Asian and European countries, where some airports have equipment set up to take the passengers’ temperatures.

The World Bank estimates that SARS will cost Asia 15 billion dollars just this year, while OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) reports that the Asian region’s demand for crude has already dropped 300,000 barrels a day due to the sharp decline in air travel.

Even though Latin America is far from the epicentre of the disease, the economic effects are beginning to be felt.

Mexico’s business dealings with Asian countries have been disrupted to the point that executives have suspended direct contact with their counterparts and cancelled trips to trade shows.

Furthermore, Mexican officials have decided that negotiations for a free trade accord with Japan will continue in the coming months, but not in person. Talks will take place via electronic communications, such as Internet conferences.

Brazil, too, has postponed official travel to Asia for trade or economic negotiations, and the country’s chicken exports have been hit as its sales to Asia have dropped off markedly.

Chile is suffering the indirect effects of SARS as the price of copper, which it exports to Asia, has fallen.

”SARS will be with us for a long time,” and there is much left to be done to eradicate it, says Henk Bekedam, WHO representative in China.

The Latin American and Caribbean region, although with precautions only partially implemented, is already on the frontline in combating the disease.

(Diego Cevallos is an IPS correspondent. Mario Osava/Brazil, Humberto Márquez/ Venezuela, Dalia Acosta/Cuba, Abraham Lama/Peru and Jorge Alberto Grochembake/Guatemala contributed to this report.)

* The original version of this article was published May 3 in Spanish by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme: www.tierramerica.net