Hundreds of Beijingers turned out for flu shots Monday on the
first day of an expanded anti-influenza campaign.
Starting from this week, 427 clinics across the capital's 18
districts and counties, will provide flu vaccines to the
public.
In the past, just 300 clinics provided the service from October,
according to the municipal disease control and prevention
center.
The campaign has expanded and started earlier than normal
because of fears that the flu could be misdiagnosed as SARS, said
He Xiong, deputy director of the center.
The flu season runs from October to March. This is the period
when SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) is most likely to
recur.
As flu patients have similar symptoms to SARS sufferers in the
early stages of their illness, they could be misdiagnosed, he
said.
"To prevent flu patients from being mistaken for SARS sufferers
and to reduce cross-infection, we must help people avoid the flu,"
said He.
This year, the center has prepared 1.5 million flu vaccines, far
more than the usual 400,000 vaccines.
He added that 36 flu monitoring stations have started work
earlier than usual.
But SARS researchers stress the flu vaccines is only a temporary
measure in reducing misdiagnoses.
The most urgent tasks are to increase the rate of correct SARS
diagnoses in early stage and develop a vaccine for the new disease,
said Huang Wenlin, a vaccine researcher from south China's
Guangdong Province, in an interview with People's
Daily.
Huang predicted that vaccines could be produced as early as the
end of this year. However, genetic vaccines, which are based on
molecular biology, would still take two or three years to
develop.
He appealed to scientists and research organizations to unite in
their search for SARS vaccines.
In another development, the trial of a new SARS health reporting
system began yesterday. It enables hospitals around the country to
alert the national disease control and prevention center and the
health ministry of suspected SARS cases.
Shanghai Evening News quoted Jin Shuigao from the
national center as saying the new reporting system should be more
effective than the existing one.
Local hospitals can download the new system from the Internet,
and the ministry has trained provincial hospitals in its use, Jin
said.
Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) also urged all
countries to reactivate their disease monitoring systems, Hong
Kong-based Wen Wei Po news reported.
WHO's Asia-Pacific branches recommended expanding the range of
monitoring systems, supporting a regional laboratory system, and
setting up training projects for epidemic control.
(China Daily September 16, 2003)