Dr. Wolfgang Preiser, a 37-year-old virologist from Frankfurt/Germany, also a WHO delegate,investigator and medical doctor, recently travelled to China to assist in assessing the SARS epidemic there. He was in China as part of a team of WHO experts who were documenting the SARS situation and reporting on their findings at the 109th Professional Congress of the German Association for Internal Medicine.
The Epoch Times spoke with the 37-year-old physician from Frankfurt:
Question: Dr. Preiser, why did you travel to China?
Dr. Preiser: I am Chief of Staff at the Institute for Virological Medicine at the University in Frankfurt. Because of my training and position, I was one of the first who had dealt with the two SARS cases in Germany. We were successful on several fronts in establishing proof of the cause of the disease and then, one week later, I was on my way to China, as a consultant to the WHO.
Q: When was that?
Dr. Preiser: That was March 23, 2003. And, instead of the planned ten days in China, I stayed a total of five weeks and just returned this past weekend. In the meantime I have made inspections of the total Chinese health care system – first in Beijing, then through the Provincial Governments of all areas in China, followed by Guandong Province, then the Beijing metropolitan area and surrounding areas and lastly, Shanghai. I checked documentations done by health ministries and how they cope with the SARS epidemic; visited hospitals; looked in on state health care agencies, and, together with my colleagues, made recommendations on how the situation could be improved.
Q: What was your impression of the SARS situation in China? What does the real picture of the spread of SARS in China look like?
Dr. Preiser: The situation during the past few weeks had really come to a point, but we must not forget that this is due to several reasons: those now are officially published figures. They sound bad, but the situation has not suddenly become worse. It had been bad before, except that the reality of the illness had not been publicised and these high numbers had existed for quite some time. Another reason was the gross lack of distribution of information – most people in China are/were unaware of the reality of the illness; the other factor is the lack of openness on the part of the authorities. One of the reasons for travelling to China was to find the truth about the real situation. In no way were we told the truth. The facts were in part concealed, in part minimised, in part belittled, in part merely implication and speculation. We had discovered that the actual circumstances did not look nearly as rosy as the people in charge want us to believe; that the disease is now under control. We can see this from the daily, drastically rising numbers of new cases of this infection, particularly in Beijing. But the other provinces are also involved – Inner Mongolia, Shanghai and for certain other areas. It is in those places where the public health authorities are only now beginning to fathom the immensity of this problem. Only if one can keep track of these cases and deal with them can the spread of this epidemic be prevented.
Q.: What is your best guess as to the further developments of this epidemic in China?
Dr. Preiser: It will be very difficult. Unfortunately, valuable time has been wasted that cannot be recouped – several weeks of it, that should have been utilised to prepare and be ready to deal with this. That has been squandered. During the time, the infection had ample opportunity to spread, and now things are a lot more difficult to deal with than they would have been at the beginning of March. We do hope that the situation can be brought under control again. But it will take several months, half a year, perhaps, or even a year.
Q: And how do you see the situation in Shanghai?
Dr. Preiser: There are several clues in Shanghai regarding the disease, namely that the epidemic had been wrongfully classified, that actual SARS patient were documented as “probable” cases and that “probable cases” were documented as something else. We urged the authorities to re-evaluate their system and to re-examine these patients carefully. It seems that there are fewer patient in Shanghai than in Beijing. This might be due to the city’s preparedness for the disease. Perhaps it is sheer luck that fewer cases showed up in Shanghai. Another reason might be that there were none of those incidents where infected patients escaped from hospitals, as had happened in Beijing.
Q: Is Shanghai expecting a peak of this disease?
Dr. Preiser: Shanghai, as with all other parts of China, must be ready for an influx of people infected with this and must remain at the highest level of alert. The measures already taken and/or planned are good ones, but must definitely be improved and must be implemented. That was our stern recommendation. So far things are going alright in Shanghai, but they are not out of the woods yet. They have to be careful there and avoid any new cases in their city, and if they should happen, that they deal with them properly.
Q: What is your impression regarding the measures the Chinese government has so far instituted?
Dr. Preiser: They are partly overdone and hair-brained. We also fear that those methods might have the opposite effect, a paradoxical effect. For instance, to criminally punish people for having been in contact with the disease; or, on the other hand, to compel people who have come into contact with the disease and become ill themselves to go “underground” and not seek treatment. On the other hand, with the steadily rising numbers of cases of this disease it is perhaps justified to use drastic measures. But it is crucial to retain a balance, and does not always seem to be the case. It seems, though, that all these are attempts to compensate for the delay, therefore there is mass activity now.
Q.: And what would you recommend for the Chinese citizenry and for China – how could they improve their lot?
Dr. Preiser: Oh, there are a whole number of things. Of primary importance is the duty of the public health entities to immediately catch new cases and determine the number of people the ill person had contacts with, and to contact them, also. Another important factor is for hospitals to have the capability to deal with and treat all patients affected with SARS in a timely manner, and to treat them in such a way that they cannot spread the infection to others. Those are the two most important components of combating the disease.
Q.: To what extent do you estimate there exists the danger of SARS spreading to countries outside of China, particularly to “developed” countries in Europe?
Dr. Preiser: Well, it is true that we always have to keep the possibility of spreading this illness into Europe in the back of our minds. So far, as I have witnessed, the measures instituted at airports are not that good. But we here in Europe and also in the United States are well prepared for such imports. I do not foresee a catastrophic outbreak of this infection, but individual cases might crop up, and that those might spread to persons of close contact, such as family members.
Q: All right, many thanks!
Dr. Preiser: You are welcome!
Translated from Chinese at http://www.minghui.ca/mh/articles/2003/5/5/49686.html
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