World Health Organization (WHO) officials Thursday said co-operation with Beijing was "excellent'' -- despite overseas reports that the WHO is failing to receive key SARS information from China.
The reports were based on information from the organization's Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) in Manila, the Philippines.
"I believe such (comments) from certain WHO officers (are made) because they do not have as much information as us,'' Henk Bekedam, the WHO's representative in China, said Thursday in Beijing.
The responsibility of the Chinese government is to report the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) situation to the WHO's Chinese office.
The local office then forwards the information to the WPRO and its headquarters in Geneva, according to Robert Dietz, the spokesman for the WHO's Chinese office.
Dietz told China Daily that the office reported China's daily figures to the WPRO, but it did not necessarily forward on all details relating to the outbreak in the country.
Bekedam said the Beijing municipal government is very co-operative and offering all possible data to his organization on a daily basis. The situation was no different in the provinces where the WHO has visited.
He said if there were any queries with figures, the local government would offer them opportunities to further investigate.
Daniel Chin, a WHO medical officer, Thursday admitted that the flow of information from China was slower when compared with other countries.
He pushed aside suggestions that political reasons were the cause of the problem, saying it was createdby the "way of working.''
"It is different between (an) unwillingness to share and (a) slowness in sharing. And the case in Beijing is obviously the second one,'' Chin explained.
Meanwhile, Bekedam said: "The SARS epidemic is over its peak. We can see it globally and we can also see it in China. I think that's very good news.''
However, he said the world still had to remain vigilant against the disease.
Toronto's new outbreak showed that another wave could be sparked with "just one missed diagnosis.''
Bekedam's comments came as China, for a second consecutive day, reported no new cases of SARS on its mainland in the 24 hours to 10am Thursday.
At Thursday's press conference, WHO adviser Arne Brantsaeter said they did not see anything in Beijing's Beiyuan residential area -- a SARS hotspot -- that resembled the scenario in Amoy Gardens in Hong Kong, where 42 residents died from the virus and over 300 people were infected in March.
The situation at Beiyuan, in the city's northeast, had been contained and brought "under control,'' she said, adding the last case in the area occurred on May 26 or 27.
Seven confirmed SARS patients and seven suspected SARS cases have been linked to the area since mid-April. It is home to more than 20,000 residents.
No residential area in the world, noted Brantsaeter, were like Amoy Gardens in terms of severity.
She said the Beijing authorities had responded swiftly to the Beiyuan situation after being alerted.
Brantsaeter also praised the work of the Beijing Centre of Disease Control and Prevention during the spread of the disease in the area.
The Asia Times alleged that the SARS cases at Beiyuan were being covered up and the situation could have erupted to create another incident similar to Amoy Gardens.
Senior officials with the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau said Thursday the figures at Beiyuan had been included in the daily reports issued by the Ministry of Health.
All of the people in the area who had close contact with SARS carriers, a total of 91, had been put in quarantine, according to Liang Wannian, the health bureau's vice-director.
All of the area's three clinics have been closed.
Liang said the localized epidemic condition showed that the preventative measures being used in the area were not effective.
In another development, sources with the WHO said Thursday that with the exception of Hebei Province, there seemed to be limited local transmissions of the flu-like virus in Henan, Anhui and Guangxi provinces and autonomous region.
The finding was made after a WHO delegation visited the provinces and autonomous regions in May, jointly with teams from the Ministry of Health.
The WHO attributed the stifling of the SARS spread to three main reasons: the close monitoring of travel centers like railways and the ability to identify possible SARS cases, the quarantining of people who have returned to rural provinces from infected areas and the widespread use of clinics for the diagnosis and isolation of potential carriers.
(China Daily June 6, 2003)
