Bird flu hits India. Turkey and Indonesia detect cases. Is the next viral export may prove far deadlier?
The lesson China and the rest of Asia supposedly learned from the SARS or the bird flu epidemic was clear: honesty is the best policy when dealing with a dangerous epidemic -- share the news! Issue warnings. Save lives. As bird flu hits India's most densely populated state and spread to a seventh district today, cases are detected in Turkey and Indonesia. Tho it is nothing gay about bird flu, we have reasons to worry.
In 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared SARS all but eliminated in China, the muffled news of another outbreak showed that the mainland have been treating health as a state secret. Southern China was suffering a severe outbreak of the deadly mosquito-borne disease Japanese encephalitis then and on the last day of of June that year, Guangdong, the worst-hit province, recorded its 287th cases, with 23 deaths, while Guanxi, Hainan and Hunan all reported a handful of additional cases.
Japanese encephalitis, a virus carried from pigs and birds to humans, has a death rate of up to 30%. It's not uncommon in the humid rural areas of southern China; the WHO says the country routinely sees up to 10,000 cases a year. More surprising, perhaps, is that despite post-SARS claims of cross-border openness, officials in neighboring Hong Kong weren't informed about the outbreak by their counterparts in Guangdong; instead they reportedly found out from the media.
Although Hong Kong itself has little to fear from Japanese encephalitis, many microbiologists are saying all countries in Asia should open up about its medical problems.
The lesson China and the rest of Asia supposedly learned from the SARS or the bird flu epidemic was clear: honesty is the best policy when dealing with a dangerous epidemic -- share the news! Issue warnings. Save lives. As bird flu hits India's most densely populated state and spread to a seventh district today, cases are detected in Turkey and Indonesia. Tho it is nothing gay about bird flu, we have reasons to worry.
In 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared SARS all but eliminated in China, the muffled news of another outbreak showed that the mainland have been treating health as a state secret. Southern China was suffering a severe outbreak of the deadly mosquito-borne disease Japanese encephalitis then and on the last day of of June that year, Guangdong, the worst-hit province, recorded its 287th cases, with 23 deaths, while Guanxi, Hainan and Hunan all reported a handful of additional cases.
Japanese encephalitis, a virus carried from pigs and birds to humans, has a death rate of up to 30%. It's not uncommon in the humid rural areas of southern China; the WHO says the country routinely sees up to 10,000 cases a year. More surprising, perhaps, is that despite post-SARS claims of cross-border openness, officials in neighboring Hong Kong weren't informed about the outbreak by their counterparts in Guangdong; instead they reportedly found out from the media.
Although Hong Kong itself has little to fear from Japanese encephalitis, many microbiologists are saying all countries in Asia should open up about its medical problems.
Comments
Post a Comment
What do you think?