The Hindu : No SARS case in India as per WHO definition: Minister

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, May 02, 2003

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No SARS case in India as per WHO definition: Minister

By P. Sunderarajan

The Union Health Minister, Sushma Swaraj, wearing a mask before entering the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Kingsway Camp in New Delhi on Thursday. — Photo: Anu Pushkarna.

NEW DELHI MAY 1. The World Health Organisation and the Central Government today declared that India had no case of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) as on date since not a single person in the country fitted the case definition formulated by the WHO for the disease.

Addressing a joint press conference, the Union Health Minister, Sushma Swaraj, and the WHO representative in India, S.J. Habayeb, said that as per WHO definition, a person could be considered as SARS-affected only if he or she met all the three following basic conditions: should have a fever more than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit, should have difficulty breathing or other respiratory problem, and should either have travelled to a SARS-affected country or should have been in contact with a known SARS patient.

In India, none except one person in Goa had so far satisfied all the three conditions and the condition of that person had also improved and he had been discharged. Consequently, the WHO has even removed India from the list of countries reporting SARS cases as of today, they said.

Asked how then was the Government announcing detection of SARS cases from different parts of the country now and then, Ms. Swaraj clarified that what was being announced was only the results of tests on samples collected from suspected cases and they were made public "only with a view to tell the people that the Government was transparent and had nothing to hide".

The test results, she and Dr. Habayeb emphasised, had no meaning unless the cases also had clinical symptoms.

The tests were only supportive in nature and by themselves were not enough, particularly since the exact nature of the virus was yet to be known fully and subsequently the tests, which were based on knowledge available so far, were not totally reliable.

In this context, Ms. Swaraj noted that in India a large number of persons were carriers of the Tuberculosis virus but only those who showed clinical symptoms were considered TB patients and not others.

The WHO had, in fact, been asking the Centre to stick to its definition ever since the Government began announcing the test results and the WHO website had also been maintaining that there was only one case in India.

But the Government went ahead and kept making its announcements.

A turning point came on Wednesday, after two doctors and seven para-medical staff treating a family of suspected cases in Pune tested positive raising serious concern among medical professionals.

Ms. Swaraj announced that hereafter only the samples of persons who met the three WHO pre-requisites would be sent for laboratory analysis. However, the country would remain in a state of high alert for SARS as a measure of abundant caution.

As regards the status of persons currently under isolation in hospitals or under home quarantine without fulfilling WHO definition completely, she said they would be discharged as and when they completed 10 days of isolation or quarantine if they did not show symptoms in the meantime.

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