A rchive Date
[ 30-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ China ]
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[http://chealth.canoe.ca/health_news_detail.asp?news_id=6934
China reports more infections
Provided by: Associated Press
Written by: GEOFF SPENCER
Apr. 29, 2003
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - With SARS spreading back home, China's premier on Tuesday met Southeast Asian leaders at an emergency summit to win back international trust after weeks of cover-up accusations and amid economic worries.
Premier Wen Jiabao came to Bangkok to brief leaders from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations about efforts to combat the highly infectious respiratory disease, which has sickened more than 5,300 people in 20 countries, mostly in Asia.
At the summit, 10 southeast Asian countries agreed to set up a regional information network to help stop the spread of SARS, according to a joint draft declaration by their leaders.
Separately, hard-hit China and Taiwan both established funds to combat the disease while Mongolia reported its first cases and New Zealand and South Korea for the first time said they had probable SARS cases.
On Tuesday, China reported nine more deaths and 200 new infections, bringing its SARS death toll to 148. The worldwide toll is at least 354.
The World Health Organization says SARS probably has peaked in many places, but it fears the situation is worsening in China where 200 new infections were also announced Tuesday.
Nearly 10,000 people who might have been exposed to the virus have been put under home quarantine in China - including 7,600 in Beijing.
Millions of Chinese are avoiding shops and some are staying away from work, raising fears of massive economic consequences that could have international implications.
President Hu Jintao has ordered Communist Party officials to "move forward with economic work while going all out to combat the SARS epidemic," the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The strain of the disease is affecting the world's most populous nation in other ways as well.
Chinese police confirmed that villagers near Beijing ransacked a building after they heard rumors it was to be made into a SARS ward.
The violence erupted Sunday in Chagugang, about 60 miles southeast of Beijing.
Construction crews had installed metal partitions and beds in the vacant junior high school, said a construction worker reached there by telephone. He wouldn't give his name. An official of the Tianjin Public Health Bureau, which is responsible for the town, said it had no plans to put SARS patients in the school.
In other signs of tension, a newspaper reported that health workers in the capital were fatigued and demoralized and that some hospitals treating SARS patients were running low of drugs and even face masks.
The Japanese government advised its 3,000 students studying in Beijing to return home and extended its travel advisory to all of China instead of just the capital.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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