WHO sends SARS expert to China

Main Category: Flu / Cold / SARS
Article Date: 29 Dec 2003 - 0:00 PDT


A World Health Organisation expert is in China to try to find out whether the country's first suspected Sars patient in half a year has the virus. A joint team of WHO and health ministry experts is to head to the southern province of Guangdong to help testing on the 32-year-old patient.

Health officials say it could take several days to reach a diagnosis on the man, who appears to be doing well. Earlier this year, the flu-like virus killed nearly 350 people in China.

The country is already at a heightened state of vigilance, even though the Sars case announced at the weekend is only suspected, not confirmed.

Newspapers show pictures of a bawling baby having its temperature taken at a railway station, and there is chatter on TV finance programmes about the effects on China's stock markets.

Test results

What's worrying the health authorities is that unlike confirmed cases in Taiwan and Singapore, the patient in hospital in Guangzhou is not a medical researcher.

He's a freelance television journalist, who says he has not recently eaten wild animals or travelled anywhere.

The WHO expert has already arrived in China to help review the test results already gathered.

More diagnostic methods will be tried, when the specialist team travels to Guangzhou.

It is still possible though that if experts can't find where the infection came from, they won't be able to pin a confirmed Sars label on the case.

But even so, WHO officials say the authorities' brisk response to the renewed Sars threat will have been a worthwhile exercise in itself.

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