The Hindu : SARS patient discharged

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

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SARS patient discharged

By Aarti Dhar

PANAJI APRIL 18. The country's first confirmed Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) patient was today discharged from the Goa Medical College Hospital (GMCH), where he had been kept in isolation, after he had been cured of the ailment, the Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, announced.

The 32-year-old marine engineer, Prasheel Varde, hailing from Ponda, Goa, was readmitted to the hospital on the night of April 16 after tests of his blood, sputum, and urine samples at the National Institute of Virology, Pune, showed positive.

"The Union Health Ministry concurred with the decision taken by the State Government and gave clearance for his discharge," Mr. Parrikar told a press conference. — PTI

'Surprise development'

Our New Delhi Special Correspondent writes:

However, Union Health Ministry officials expressed surprise at the discharge of the Goa SARS patient. They found it difficult to explain why the patient was brought back to the hospital on April 17 and discharged within 24 hours after he had been declared to have fully recovered. A Ministry source said the exact sequence of events would be known after consultation with the two-member expert team from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, which has arrived here from Pune, this evening.

The doctors attending on the patient in Goa again took his sputum, blood and urine samples today for another set of the more sophisticated PCR tests.

Meanwhile, an Australian, suspected to be suffering from SARS in New Delhi, was cleared of the disease.

There was some panic at the capital's Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) this morning after the NICD enquired from them about a seven-year-old girl, whose blood and sputum samples had been sent for SARS test. The girl, whose father works in Beijing, had arrived here on April 5. She was taken to the IDH with complaints of fever and cough last night but her parents took her away against medical advice. However, she has been traced to the posh Sushant Lok colony in Gurgaon and, on enquiry, she was found `afebrile' (without fever) and decreasing cough, and certainly not conforming to the SARS symptoms as per the guidelines issued by the WHO.

The Centre has also put in gear its surveillance system in the wake of detection of a SARS case in Goa yesterday. While Rapid Response Teams have been constituted in over 100 districts under the National Surveillance Diseases Programme for early detection and quick response, the NICD units at eight places have been alerted and this week's CD Alert, an inhouse weekly newsletter, features SARS. This newsletter had been distributed among the medical practitioners and health workers and even posted on the website for general knowledge.

So far 3,389 cases and 165 deaths from SARS have been reported from 25 countries. Though the number of countries has increased, the WHO today claimed that the number ofcases was showing a decline. While Austria has been re-inducted into the list with three new cases, the disease is showing a marked decline in Canada and Vietnam.

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