Opinion - Editorials   

SARS wars

THE SARS THREAT has placed India on a red alert even as reports of a few people testing positive for this flu-like disease have emerged from different parts of the country. The fresh measures announced by the Union Health Ministry include the provision of masks (to airport employees, doctors and paramedical staff) and the isolation of any passenger arriving at an international airport who exhibits symptoms of the virus (until blood tests and other examinations prove negative). Since it is impracticable to screen every international visitor and since those who catch the infection may take up to a week or more to develop SARS, there can be no foolproof measure — in this age of international travel — to prevent the virus from entering the country. The best that can be done is to create a mechanism to continuously monitor the incidence of SARS in the country as well as create the conditions for inhibiting its transmission. The first task has been vested with a special joint action group, with representatives from the States and the Centre, that is expected to keep the Health Ministry advised about what needs to be done to tackle the disease from time to time. Screening and isolating international visitors is an important measure towards inhibiting the transmission of the virus, but the real fear is over how India will cope with SARS in the event of an outbreak of it.

In a country where awareness is relatively low and medical infrastructure relatively poor, there is a considerable risk of a killer disease (which spreads in a way similar to the common cold) causing havoc. The good news so far is that only a few cases have tested positive and that every one of them has caught the infection abroad. Moreover, there have been no deaths, no transmission from patient to close family members and the natural remission of the disease in a few cases. Does this mean that the risk of SARS becoming an epidemic is very low in India? It is much too premature to rush to such optimistic conclusions. India may have done well to act ahead of time against the SARS threat but there is room for neither apathy nor overconfidence against a disease that is infecting more and more people by the day. The worldwide incidence of SARS continues to throw up a confusing pattern, with the virus re-emerging when there was hope that it had exhausted itself, with evidence that those infected in China could be much greater than admitted and with no clear picture at the moment about which prevails in the ongoing battle against the disease: the virus or the global medical establishment.

The agitating pilots who threw Air India schedules into disarray by refusing to fly to SARS-hit destinations or alongside cabin crew that had recently been in these places have focussed attention on the fear the disease has triggered in the country. In this era of economic interdependence, cancellation of international flights to all SARS-affected countries, which now number a great many, is simply not an option. But travel to South East Asia, which constitutes an estimated 30 per cent of the travel out of India, has already been badly affected, with both holiday-makers and businessmen preferring to stay at home. Places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, which have announced stimulus packages to offset the impact of SARS, have been made painfully aware that the virus has the potential to wreak economic havoc. Even Canada, where 16 persons have succumbed to the disease, has expressed fears that the disease — which recently provoked the WHO into issuing a controversial travel advisory for Toronto — could significantly retard economic growth. The possible economic impact of the disease on India is something that will need to be assessed with bodies such as industry chamber FICCI estimating that the Asian economy is likely to suffer a loss of up to $50 billion following the SARS outbreak. To what degree this will impact on India will depend, among other things, on how effectively the country is able to control the spread of the virus.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

• SARS wars
• Paying for public safety
• Drowning out the truth
• Monsoon forecasting
• Only member-states can make the U.N. work
• Transforming Indo-U.S. ties
• Rising intolerance
• Working of MPLADS
• Saving heritage

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu