James Maguire, an expert with the World Health Organization (WHO), said in Shanghai Friday that he and his WHO colleagues who recently visited Shanghai "were allowed to go wherever we wanted to and do whatever we wanted" in their efforts to investigate the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Maguire made the remarks at a press conference before concluding the team's five-day tour in Shanghai.
According to him, the Shanghai municipal government provided the team with a list of all medical institutions and hospitals and allowed the team to investigate them at random.
Maguire said the expert team notified hospitals only five to thirty minutes before beginning investigations.
Each hospital they investigated provided relevant documents and files to the experts, he added.
Other experts present at the conference included Keiji Fukuda, Daniel Chin and Li Ailan.
(Xinhua News Agency April 26, 2003)
