Ignorance and confusion is frightening

The lack of proper information in relation to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is disconcerting in itself, but the official bungling is utterly frightening.

A week ago yesterday, a Chinese childcare worker presented at St Vincent's Hospital, Dublin, but was not considered sufficiently ill to be admitted.

Instead, she was given a surgical mask and sent back to the Dun Laoghaire hostel where she was staying.

This was contrary to guidelines issued by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which recommend that suspected cases of SARS should be hospitalised.

In this instance, doctors obviously did not suspect she had SARS, even though she had recently returned from the province of Guangdong, China, where SARS is believed to have originated.

By Tuesday, doctors were arguing whether she should be categorised as at "very serious risk" or as a "probable" SARS case.

Yet the following day the Eastern Regional Authority (ERHA) seemed to rule out SARS. "All tests had been carried out and were negative," the ERHA declared. "There is no evidence that it is SARS."

Then yesterday morning, Dr John Devlin, medical officer at the Department of Health, described the woman who is currently in isolation at Cherry Orchard Hospital as a "probable" SARS case.

Later in the day, however, the ERHA insisted the woman's case should be downgraded again to "suspected", and the Department of Health concurred.

In the face of such contradictory information from official health sources, it is little wonder that the media and the public are confused.

The first case of this disease was only detected on November 16, 2002, in Guangdong. But it was quickly transmitted to nurses who came into contact with the patient.

The Chinese did not inform the WHO until early February. Later that month an infected Chinese doctor came down with the virus while on a visit to Hong Kong, and he apparently infected a number of people staying at the same hotel, including four Canadians and an American businessman.

The Canadians unwittingly returned to home, resulting in the spread of the disease in the Toronto area, while the American businessman went to Hanoi in Vietnam, where the virus was diagnosed.

As of yesterday, more than 4,600 cases of SARS had been reported in 25 different countries, and more than 260 people have already died of the disease.

As the incubation period is up to ten days, there is no knowing how many people have already been affected.

With the development of modern medicines, society has become relatively lax about the dangers of pandemics.

Many dreaded diseases were virtually eradicated in the last century, but society should be aware that SARS should not be taken lightly, especially as the virus has reportedly been mutating.

In the circumstances the confusion in health circles, from the Minister, Mícheál Martin, and his advisers down, is alarming.

This time two years ago the country was in the grip of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Extraordinary precautions were taken to save the cattle, sheep and pig populations, with the result that the instance of the disease was mercifully confined to just one case.

Yet in the face of SARS, a potentially lethal disease to humans, we are confronted with a vile concoction of official confusion, ignorance and bungling, complicated by the apparent indifference of the country's 300 public health doctors putting the population at risk with their current strike.