The Hindu : China pledges against SARS cover-up

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Apr 19, 2003

International

International

China pledges against SARS cover-up

By P. S. Suryanarayana

Roman Catholic nuns wearing protective masks pray during Good Friday mass in Hong Kong on Friday. — AP

SINGAPORE April 18 . China has vowed against any cover-up of the SARS menace, even as the World Health Organisation (WHO), articulating the concerns of the international community, intensified its pressure on Beijing to take proactive steps to control the spread of the dreaded "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome''.

The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held an emergency meeting in Beijing on Thursday to review the situation following the WHO's appraisal of the situation in some China's military hospitals which, in the world body's reckoning, were not reporting on the incidence of SARS in the manner required for a full and transparent assessment of the `grave' situation in that country. With the CPC's General Secretary and China's President, Hu Jintao, presiding over the party's Politburo panel, Beijing's de facto centre of political gravity sought to come to grips with a crisis which, if uncontrolled, could hurt the country's economic prospects and also its image as a responsible and major power.

It was in this context that Mr. Hu called for an open accounting of China's current battle against SARS which is widely recognised to have originated in that country as far back as November last year.

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