Our response to SARS proves that people are less valued than cattle

As a Rockies supporter, the minister would probably be more familiar with the local variety, rather than the SARS which at the moment is more like a Chinese puzzle.

Before last weekend, it would probably be true to say that most people here had never heard of the Chinese province of Guangdong, and would have known only that SARS had originated somewhere in China.

But the arrival of a woman from that part of the world had a very dramatic and chastening affect on us, because single-handedly she revealed we haven't got a clue how to handle a possible case of SARS.

The incident also revealed how hindsight is a marvellous benefit to politicians, specifically the Minister for Health in this case.

The woman in question had presented herself with a high temperature at the Accident & Emergency department of St Vincents Hospital in Dublin last Friday.

She was identified as possibly suffering from SARS but was allowed back into the community and the hostel where she was staying, wearing a mask to protect everybody else just in case.

Obviously, a bit of a panic set in and the gardaí were subsequently called in to round up the unfortunate woman and lodge her in another hospital.

They carried out their mission fairly fast, but then there weren't too many people walking around Dublin wearing a white surgical mask.

Three days later, the Department of Health woke up to the fact that there was a SARS scare on their doorstep.

The minister had to admit on RTÉ's Morning Ireland that the department had not been informed until last Monday. Thankfully, for her own sake and everybody else's, tests carried out on the woman proved negative.

This prompted the minister, whose department hadn't a clue what was going on at the time, to declare: "The results of the tests vindicate the action and treatment they gave in the hospital on Friday night."

That is a classic example of the benefit of hindsight! He praised the most senior experts in infectious diseases who handled the case, some of whom were on strike over a dispute with his own department and who left the picket line to look after the woman.

The minister also had to admit that the contingency plan for reporting the SARS virus had "broken down" in the case of the Chinese woman.

Maybe there should be some other contingency for the contingency plan, because you never know when a contingency is going to come along that's the nature of contingencies.

However, the stroke of luck in the woman proving negative should not lull us into any false sense of security, because the World Health Organisation (WHO), which Mr Martin often quotes, was not happy with the way the case was handled.

The WHO has said that guidelines for the treatment of suspected SARS cases were breached in the treatment of the Chinese woman.

The organisation stated that all suspected SARS cases should be hospitalised, and it had not issued any guidelines to the effect that suspected cases could be treated in people's homes or in the community.

So the woman should never have been released from hospital in the first place, especially as she happens to be from Guangdong province, where the pneumonia-like virus originated.

Where does that leave claims by the Minister that the Department of Health had been very proactive in getting out the proper guidelines and advice to doctors in the community and in hospitals on how to manage and treat people with symptoms that resembled SARS?

Guidelines issued earlier this month by the National Disease Surveillance Centre were followed, according to a spokesman for the hospital.

These state that a suspect case should be hospitalised if the patient had had close contact with a probable SARS case, but if he or she just had a history of travel to an affected area they could be isolated at home.

The latter part of that statement is in conflict with the guidelines laid down by the WHO which state that all suspect SARS cases should be hospitalised.

Maybe those iodine tablets we all got in the post would be the best bet, if we could only find them.

Since the near-panic that set in all over the country since the episode of the Chinese woman, it has been said that the media was making too much of the whole SARS story.

That may very well be true, but if the Government has no strategy in place to combat what could be a very real threat to the country's health, then somebody has to be shouting about it.

The obvious comparison which has been made is to the reaction against the outbreak of foot and mouth not too long ago, and the very visible action plan that swung into place to try to contain it.

No such plan to counteract SARS is visible here, and the attitude of officialdom seems to be an ad-hoc one. I appreciate that the Government has amply displayed its opinion of the people as being solely election fodder, but we at least warrant more consideration than cattle.

A leading microbiologist has called on the Government to approach the possibility of a SARS outbreak here in the same way as it approached the foot and mouth crisis.

However, Dr Ed Smyth of the National Disease Surveillance Centre said there should be more public health notices at airports for people returning from areas where the disease was endemic.

That's the very least that should be put in place. Considering the potential cost of a possible incidence of SARS here, the cost of installing thermal-imaging screens in our airports could prove to be peanuts by comparison.

It's unfortunate that the country's 300 public health doctors are on strike during this scare, but having waited nine years to have their dispute resolved, it's not surprising that their patience ran out.

Normally, it is their job to monitor and investigate an outbreak of an infectious disease, and while SARS is a startling example of one, their work also involves an outbreak of something like meningitis.

Despite the confidence of the organisers expressed during the week that the Special Olympics would be staged irrespective of SARS, it is highly unlikely that the event could escape entirely unscathed.

Currently, there is no plan to ban athletes coming from countries infected with the virus. But the SARS expert group set up by the minister would want to come up with some realistic proposals before too long.