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Scenes from another time of flu

By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-04-30 07:45

These scenes come to us from San Luis Potosi and other parts of Mexico, where a new strain of influenza has killed at least 150 people. The so-called swine flu has already spread across North America, and may have reached as far as Spain and New Zealand.

A deadly flu outbreak is something we Beijingers lived through six years ago.

Over the Labor Day holiday in May 2003, my family and I drove out to the Ming Tombs. There were few cars on the road and no more than five in the parking lot when we arrived.

I remember shuddering as we ventured down into the underground palace of the Dingling museum. During a normal Labor Day weekend, the museum receives tens of thousands of visitors. But on that day, there were only the three of us - my husband, my daughter, and I. We could hear our own footsteps as we walked down the steps toward the famous white marble gate.

A day after our outing, the Ming Tombs were closed to the public, along with cinemas, theaters, art galleries, and museums. Those were dark days in Beijing, as we suffered through the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic.

Now, the current flu outbreak has forced Mexico and even the US to declare public health emergencies. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also declared a global epidemic and pandemic alert.

In response to the flu outbreak, the Chinese Cabinet and the Ministry of Public Health has announced a series of measures, from checking travelers at the borders to enhancing surveillance of pneumonia cases.

Still, some of the Chinese media exhibited a kind of smugness - suggesting that China may be less susceptible to the flu than other countries - that I find troubling .

While we certainly shouldn't panic, this is no time for complacency. There is much that is still unknown about the new virus. For example, we do not know how dangerous the virus is, how severe the symptoms can be, or how it is being transmitted.

WHO has announced that this particular strain of the H1N1 virus has not been previously identified in either pigs or humans. The World Organization for Animal Health has even declared that we should stop calling the influenza "swine flu". Since the virus has "swine, avian, and human virus components," they say, it should be called "North American influenza".

What we do know is that in less than a week, over 2,000 people from 8 countries have fallen ill with the flu, besides those who died in Mexico.

We cannot ignore the fact that the H1N1 strain caused the biggest pandemic in history - the outbreak of Spanish flu in 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people. Like the Spanish flu, this strain of influenza, too, is affecting people in their 20s and early 30s. Nor can we forget the time when SARS terrorized Asia. By August 7, 2003, SARS had infected some 8,422 people in 32 countries and killed 919.

The SARS epidemic taught us many lessons, lessons we ignore at our peril. First and foremost, no one - particularly government departments in charge of public health and agriculture as well as the department of quality control, inspection and quarantine that manage food import - should shirk their responsibility during this global health emergency.

Our experience in dealing with SARS and other epidemics over the past several years should make us all the more vigilant about a possible global pandemic. Any smugness and inattention in these early stages may lead to tragedy down the road.

E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 04/30/2009 page9)