On the heels of a biting cold front, the national SARS control
and reporting system went into operation yesterday morning to
provide 24-hour online monitoring and consultation about the
disease.
The system will guarantee fast reporting of new cases of severe
acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), said Li Liming, director of
Chinese Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
The system can accommodate up to 20,000 users at the same time,
and they can also access SARS medical information and receive
online consulting, Li said.
All hospitals at the county level and above will soon be
connected to the system, and so far more than 13,000 hospitals have
access.
In South China's Guangdong Province, where the world's first
SARS case was reported, many anti-SARS initiatives have been
launched, including close co-operation with the Canadian province
of British Columbia (BC), which also had several SARS cases earlier
this year.
BC Premier Gordon Campbell met Guangdong Governor Huang Huahua
in the province's capital of Guangzhou yesterday to explore further
opportunities for mutual co-operation in diagnosing and treating
the potentially fatal disease.
Guangdong detected the world's first SARS patient in the city of
Heyuan on November 16 of 2002 while Canada reported the most SARS
cases outside of Asia.
Campbell, who arrived in Guangzhou from Shanghai Tuesday
evening, also met other senior Guangdong health officials, experts
and doctors of respiratory tract diseases at a conference on SARS
vaccine research and production.
Campbell expressed his hope that BC and Guangdong would further
their co-operation in research and production of the vaccine
against SARS and prevention and treatment of respiratory tract
disease.
The conference was jointly organized by SARS Accelerated Vaccine
Initiative (SAVI) of Canada and Guangdong Provincial Centre for
Disease Control.
In addition to further co-operation in research and production
of vaccines, SAVI is expecting to bring the vaccines developed and
produced in Canada to conduct human clinical tests in Guangdong
Province in the future.
Meanwhile both sides negotiated to exchange clinical samples
between SAVI and Guangdong Provincial Centre for Disease Control,
and explored collaboration opportunities in other areas of public
health.
(China Daily November 6, 2003)