A Whiff Of Doom

It'll be a while before we breathe easy. Before the very real twinge of fear over SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) can be eliminated from India. Till then—as the past week proved—we are going to be a nation on tenterhooks. Unnerved by the prospect of an outbreak of the highly infectious, lethal pneumonia that has killed over 100, and presently ails nearly 2,700 people in 18 countries.

Alarm bells announcing an imminent SARS attack on India have been ringing shrill every other day. Nine deaths in Bhopal over the past two to three months were the first to be linked to SARS. The patients had all died after suffering from SARS-like symptoms—fever, cough and breathing difficulties. And an 18-year-old reportedly was still being treated in a Bhopal hospital for similar symptoms. A team from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, Delhi, was rushed to Bhopal to examine the patient. SARS was duly ruled out.

Then came a scare from Mumbai. On April 2, health officials unleashed panic by releasing information that a Cathay Pacific flight carrying a SARS-infected passenger had stopped over at the city's airport. Six Indian passengers, who were sitting around him, could have contracted SARS, they said. Tests, however, ruled out the possibility.

Till another suspected SARS case surfaced, once again in Mumbai. A 23-year-old American tourist, Rebecca Raleigh, had travelled through several high-risk countries, including China, before arriving in Mumbai (via Delhi), where she developed a sore throat and high fever. Health authorities ruled out SARS, saying she was probably suffering from common influenza or bacterial pharyngitis.

Next, fortysomething Raphael Anthony walked into Hyderabad airport from an Air-India flight coming from Singapore, suffering from SARS-like symptoms. He's been in isolation at a chest hospital in Yerragadda, his condition "improving". Results of his SARS tests are awaited. Similar tests are being conducted on a woman in Delhi's Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and on a 60-year-old air passenger who returned to Chennai from Singapore with fever and cough.

These are testing times indeed for our public health infrastructure. How prepared is it to deal with the SARS epidemic? Here's an indicator: it took almost three hours to move Raphael Anthony from Hyderabad airport to a hospital after he was suspected of being a SARS patient. All this while, photographers were allowed to take his pictures and curious onlookers milled around.

Because if airports are the battleground where the enemy virus is to be identified and attacked first, then our defence is far from satisfactory. Late last week, a midnight surprise check by the health and aviation secretaries at Delhi's Indira Gandhi National Airport revealed little activity at the additional health counters set up at the arrival lounge. It was a rare passenger who had filled up the health pro forma provided by the government to track SARS, which seeks information on symptoms, travel history etc from incoming passengers.

And the masks, which experts say are the most effective preventive measure, aren't taken seriously either. Class IV employees at the airports don't wear them, nor do the bulk of passengers. This hasn't stopped local medical equipment manufacturers from upping production to meet the growing worldwide demand.

We live in a country where no diagnostic test panels are available for detecting even the common strain of viral pneumonia. And this killer pneumonia is uncommon, unknown. Our best chance against it is to keep it at bay. Panicking, surely, isn't the remedy.