It is now over one month since the World Health Organisation declared a world-wide health alert on foot of a new illness - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). It has affected over 3,500 people and caused more than 200 deaths.
Doctors and scientists throughout the world have reacted with admirable alacrity to the challenge. The causative agent has been identified as a hitherto unknown form of coronavirus. Its genetic structure is now known, and an existing anti-viral agent is helping to cure some critically ill patients. Scientists are already working on a vaccine which may offer the chance of prevention.
Initial reports of a death rate of three per cent have risen to five per cent, making the infectious illness considerably more dangerous than influenza.
The seriousness of the situation in China was underlined yesterday when the Health Minister and the Mayor of Beijing were removed from senior positions in the Communist Party, essentially dismissing them from their government posts. Their removals came as China issued new SARS-related figures showing more cases and a greater number of deaths than previously acknowledged. Hong Kong confirmed seven new deaths from the disease. Singapore ordered 2,400 people into quarantine.
The Canadian state of Ontario has been hit hard. Fourteen of its SARS cases have been fatal, representing a death rate of over nine per cent. Despite a well developed and highly functioning public health system, it was forced to introduce an extraordinary measure over the Easter weekend. Ontario health officials asked anyone who has had even one symptom of SARS to stay at home out of fear that a person developing the respiratory disease might spread it during the holiday period.
Meanwhile, in the Republic, we are entering the second week of a strike by public health doctors. With just one confirmed case of SARS in the State so far, we have escaped lightly. Perhaps much of this can be attributed to the quick reaction of public health experts at the National Disease Surveillance Centre in response to the WHO alert over the St Patrick's weekend.
But with the official classification of Britain as a SARS-affected zone, how much added risk is created by allowing industrial action to remove our first line of defence against such a significant threat to our collective health? An industrial dispute cannot take precedence over the serious threat from SARS. It is time for direct Government intervention in the interest of preserving our national health.