The last three severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) patients in south China's Guangdong Province were discharged from the hospital Wednesday morning.
Guangdong, the site of the first reported cases of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, has no SARS patients at present.
Zhong Nanshan, an academician with China's Academy of Engineering and head of Guangdong's anti-SARS expert team, said that the discharge of the last remaining SARS patients marked a victory in the fight against SARS.
Guangdong, one of the areas most severely affected by SARS, reported a total of 1,512 SARS cases during the past months.
Remarkably, Guangdong was also the first province on the Chinese mainland to have the World Health Organization (WHO) travel advisory lifted.
Zhong believes that in the future, Guangdong could be prone to scattered SARS outbreaks, but he considers a large-scale SARS outbreak impossible.
To date, all Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, with the exception of Taiwan Province, have been removed from the WHO's list of SARS-affected areas, and there are only 27 SARS patients remaining hospitalized on the Chinese mainland.
Lei Yulan, vice governor of Guangdong Province, attributed the victory over SARS to the government's great efforts to defeat the disease.
She said the country's top leaders had inspected Guangdong at the peak of the SARS crisis. They expressed their support for medical workers on the front line of the fight against SARS and warmly chatted with local residents. These gestures greatly encouraged the local government and local people.
Statistics show that, from April 20 to May 8, the relevant departments under the State Council and Beijing Municipal Government issued 180 notices on SARS prevention and treatment, ensuring that all SARS-related problems would be addressed in a timely manner to help the country achieve a final victory.
The central government and local governments have so far spent a total of 10 billion yuan on combating the disease and implemented a set of regulations on emergency public health issues.
Lei said the Guangdong provincial government will earmark 600 million yuan this year for the establishment of a disease prevention and control network within the province. It will allocate another 490 million yuan next year to further upgrade theequipment of the network.
(Xinhua News Agency July 3, 2003)
