Independent Perspective News - Nurses abandon China’s hospitals to escape Sars

From Oliver August in Beijing

HUNDREDS of hospital staff in Beijing are quitting their jobs for fear of falling ill while looking after Sars patients.

Many hospitals in the Chinese capital are said to be severely stretched as they fight the disease. The death toll rose yesterday by nine to 206, while another 160 were infected, taking the total number of case to 4,280.

The Health Ministry said that three of the new deaths were in Beijing, at present the hardest-hit city in the world, which had 98 of the latest cases. In an effort to protect the capital’s drinking water, police were guarding 80 reservoirs, the city’s Youth Daily reported. Police were preventing vehicles and people from approaching the reservoirs and the Yongding river, it said.

To combat the problem in the capital’s hospitals, many workers have been given tenfold pay increases to persuade them to stay. The Beijing Star Daily said that the Xiong Ke hospital had increased salaries for some staff from Ł30 a month to Ł300 — but still they were staying away. The hospital is short of about 100 employees.

Across China, medical workers have suffered high casualty rates since the start of the epidemic. Medical staff have also been upset by the way in which the deaths of colleagues have been handled. The husband of a Beijing nurse who died of Sars said: “When I talk about my wife, I am very likely to say something negative about the Government and the hospital. She was cremated without my knowledge and they haven’t even allowed me to see the ashes. Everything has been done without the family. The hospital hasn’t even told us how she died.”

The husband described how his wife had received little protection or help from the hospital. He said: “One day when she came home she felt uncomfortable and measured her temperature. She already had a fever and to protect our child she left the apartment to go back to the hospital. That was the last time we saw her.”

To boost morale in the medical sector, the Government is celebrating doctors and nurses as popular heroes. State broadcast authorities have given instant approval to plans for a film with Gong Li, a Hollywood star, playing a nurse on the frontline of the fight against the disease.

Shooting of the film is expected to begin in the next few days, the Beijing Times said, and it is expected to go on release in July. The film’s producers say that Gong Li — who rose to international fame in Red Sorghum and Raise the Red Lantern — will play a head nurse who leads her charges into battle against the virus.

The number of worldwide Sars deaths rose yesterday to 464 as Hong Kong reported three new deaths, Taiwan two and Singapore one. Despite a drop in new cases in Hong Kong, the territory’s Health Director said that it was too early to claim victory over the virus.

Taiwanese authorities have trained 10,000 extra volunteers, doctors and nurses to help to care for Sars patients, the Health Department said. Ten people have died from the disease on the island, which has suffered an alarming outbreak over the past ten days, infecting 116 people.

Officials said that hundreds of homeless people would be held at military camps to prevent them from being exposed to the virus and from spreading it. Nurses are being sent out to take homeless people’s temperatures.

Kazakhstan is to close its border with China within three days in an attempt to stop the virus affecting it, a government spokesman said.

There have been more than 6,300 cases of infection worldwide, but a new confidence appeared to be emerging in several places. Hong Kong, which, with 187 deaths, has been hit hardest after mainland China, reported fewer than ten new cases for the second day in a row.

Margaret Chan, the Health Director, urged residents to maintain good personal and environmental hygiene. “This is perhaps the most critical period and if we relax on these measures, all the hard work we’ve put in place in the previous two months might go to waste,” Dr Chan said.

Singapore reopened its largest wholesale market yesterday, 15 days after it had been closed because of Sars. About 2,000 employees went back to work from quarantine at home.

In Malaysia, government officials tried to calm fears over the disease. “Go back to your normal lives,” Chua Jui Meng, the Health Minister, told more than 500 Chinese community leaders.

Tourism in Asian countries has been hit badly by Sars. Visitor arrivals in Singapore plunged by 74 per cent in the last week of April, compared with the same period a year ago, the country’s tourist board said. Australian officials estimate that the disease, with the war in Iraq, will cost its tourist industry about Aus$2 billion (Ł790 million).