Asian governments move swiftly to flu crisis mode

Traumatised by the “ghost town” memories of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic, Asian governments switched immediately into crisis mode today, racing to strengthen quarantining procedures and protect the region from another killer pandemic.

With images of deserted streets in Mexico running on the evening news, many Asians were immediately reminded of the miseries of SARS – the paranoid months wearing masks in public, the economic collapse and the tough realities of “social distancing” techniques to fight the disease.

For Hong Kong, where SARS claimed nearly 300 lives in 2003, the World Health Organisation’s weekend warning that this was a health event “of international concern” was especially chilling: the city was the focal point of a 1968 flu pandemic that claimed 1 million lives around the world.

The WHO’s raising of the alert level was especially evocative because the agency’s head is Hong Kong’s former health minister and the doctor credited with pulling the city through its horrific experiences with SARS.
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Galvanised by a relentless six-year battle to contain the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, the authorities in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Malaysia quickly ramped-up quarantine measures at docks and airports. Other countries, including China, Singapore and Vietnam, each dusted-off health screening procedures put in place within the last five years.

Because of the constant threat of bird flu mutating into a human pandemic, many Asian countries now routinely scan passengers with thermo-graphic technology to check them for fever symptoms as they arrive from areas of a suspected outbreak. Those checks are now being run on passengers arriving from Mexico, California and Texas. Countries that do not have the equipment are reportedly starting medical questionnaires and other forms of health check.

With major travel agencies cancelling all flights to Mexico, and with emergency health ministry hotlines over-run with calls, Japan’s Prime Minister, Taro Aso, convened the Cabinet crisis committee and ordered it to “stop the entry of swine flu at Japan’s borders.”

Mr Ito was also under instruction to co-operate closely with other countries affected by the virus – a lack of such communication in the early days of the SARS outbreak was viewed as one of the key failings of the Asian nations affected.

Japan, which routinely uses the Tamiflu anti-viral drug in treating regular influenza, also said that it was checking stockpiles of the medicine and moving quantities to secure locations near Tokyo’s main airport in case large numbers of passengers need to be quarantined.