The Hindu : Centre convenes meet on SARS tomorrow

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 23, 2003

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Centre convenes meet on SARS tomorrow

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI April 22. Even as three new suspected cases of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome were reported from Delhi, Jaipur and Nasik, the Union Health Minister, Sushma Swaraj, today announced that a meeting of the State health authorities had been convened here on Thursday to discuss and chalk out an action plan to tackle the killer disease.

Responding to members' concern in the Lok Sabha during zero hour, Ms. Swaraj said she would personally meet all the Ministers and the Health Secretaries to discuss steps to prevent the spread of the disease.

Sharing the concerns expressed by members over the detection of four cases of SARS so far in the country, she said the "Government has taken all effective measures to deal with the situation and it will not be found lacking in future also."

Later, senior Health Ministry officials said declaring SARS as a notifiable disease was under consideration. Once so declared, doctors treating patients suffering from it would be legally bound to inform the authorities. Now, only three diseases were notifiable — plague, yellow fever and cholera.

As regards the three fresh suspected cases, the Director-General of Health Services, S.P. Agarwal, and the Director, National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Shiv Lal, said that though on the face of it these patients did not fit the criteria for SARS, they were being treated in isolation wards and their sputum and other samples had been sent for further tests.

In the Delhi case, the patient, a 29-year-old woman from Guangdong, the southern province of China from where the worldwide epidemic of SARS is suspected to have begun, had complained of cough and cold after landing here on Monday. She was initially taken to a private medical practitioner and then to the Infectious Diseases Hospital, where after repeated X-rays, her lungs were found to be clear, indicating that she was not suffering from SARS.

In Jaipur, a 29-year old man who returned from New York on April 15 was admitted to hospital on Monday after he complained of fever and cough. But, preliminary tests indicated that he was not suffering from SARS.

In Nasik, a 23-year old man, who arrived from the U.S. on April 18 with dry cough and temperature, was admitted to hospital and initial investigations revealed that he was free of SARS, the officials said.

Health Ministry sources said the Thursday meeting would also focus on the way the local authorities had handled the first confirmed case in Goa as also the three subsequent confirmed cases in a family in Pune.

In the Goa case, the patient was discharged even as reports of his sputum and other samples were under test and then suddenly readmitted to the hospital when the reports came in, only to be discharged the next day.

In Pune, even after a mother, her son and daughter had tested positive for SARS, the daughter was allowed to go ahead with her marriage in the presence of a group of relatives and friends. The two incidents have raised concerns about the seriousness being attached to the disease.

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