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Containing SARS: The scandal over Taiwan

Jonathan Mirsky IHT
Monday, May 12, 2003

LONDON Universally acknowledged to be largely responsible for the international SARS epidemic, Beijing continues to ensure that Taiwan cannot fully participate in the global effort to control the disease. Although for months the Communist government concealed the nature and extent of the virus within its own borders, it is able to exercise control over how SARS is to be tackled in the rest of the world.

It is extraordinary that other governments permit such political bullying during an international medical emergency. Even after 22 weeks of insisting that there was no health problem, before finally issuing assurances that they would now be wholly honest, the mainland authorities persist in disguising the spread of the SARS virus into the Chinese hinterland; primitive rural medical facilities there cannot protect over 700 million people from a virulent disease whose origins and treatment remain unclear.

I think it will be quite a challenge to contain SARS within China, especially those provinces which have very limited resources, said Henk Bakedom, the World Health Organizations representative in Beijing. This poses a threat to Chinas immediate neighbors.

According to a dispatch last week in The Times, medical staff at a hospital in Baoding, in Hebei Province, erected bogus structures to give a visiting WHO team a false impression of proper quarantine, and closed local clinics so that the team would not see them.

Meanwhile, Taiwan, where more than 360 people in a population of 23 million have SARS and at least 13 have died, is essentially closed off from the rest of East Asia. On May 3, a small WHO team finally visited the island. According to press reports, the WHO inspectors made no public statements and saw no ministers out of deference to Beijings sensitivities.

Beijing insists that Taiwan is a part of China. This means Taiwan, in the grip of SARS, despite its excellent medical system, will not be included on May 19 at a WHO meeting of 190 national members and other organizations, where SARS - severe acute respiratory syndrome - will be at the top of the agenda.

But unless the international medical community finds the courage to insist that Taiwan be present, minimally as an observer, Beijing will have achieved a political victory unimaginable by any other country during such an epidemic.

China insists it is cooperating wholly with all international efforts to control SARS. After his recent visit to Beijing, Senator Bill Frist, a doctor, reported that President Hu Jintao stated this is a disaster not only for China but potentially for the entire world. At the latest ASEAN meeting in Bangkok - to which Taiwan was refused entry - China s new prime minister, Wen Jiabao, stated Im daring to face the fact [of SARS] and Im daring the whole world on this issue. The Chinese government is here in a spirit of candor, responsibility, trust and cooperation.

It is a principle in international health matters that disease knows no boundaries. Dr. David Heymann, executive director of the WHOs Communicable Disease Executive Department, therefore did not spare China from culpability for the spread of SARS. He has stated, If the world had known about the disease in November, it might have been able to prevent its spread to the rest of the world. When Heymann was asked during a press conference in Geneva whether WHOs boycotting of Taiwan on the SARS issue was due to political factors, he answered: Your question is a reply itself.

The restrictions reportedly placed on the WHO team in Taiwan underline the international influence of Beijing, despite its humiliation over its months of dissembling about SARS.

Beijings adamant attitude was summed up by a Chinese diplomat in London who told me at a recent meeting on SARS where the possibility of Taiwans participation at WHO meetings arose, This is a question which must not be asked. It is for the Chinese people to decide.

The writer is former East-Asia editor of The Times (London).

Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune