The inspection carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) expert team is rigorous and professional, said Chinese doctors, commenting on the WHO's inspections to hospitals in Hebei Province, on Saturday.
The four-member WHO team visited Shijiazhuang, capital city of the northern province, Saturday morning, to examine the province's disease control and treatment work on the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic.
During the inspection of the fever clinic of a designated SARS hospital in the city, WHO experts asked very "detailed" and professional questions, said a doctor surnamed Wang.
"They even asked me to operate the ultraviolet machine to show them how we carry out disinfection," said Wang, dressed in a dark-green protective suit.
Cathryn Murphy, Hiroshi Watanabe and Li Ailan, three members of the team, visited another designated SARS hospital and were satisfied with the prevention measures there. The hospital currently has four probable and 12 suspect SARS patients, accounting for nearly half of the total of nine SARS cases and 19 suspect cases in the city.
Meanwhile, WHO expert James Maguire went to the city's epidemic prevention station where he spent the whole afternoon studying the files of the city's suspect and probable SARS cases.
"Different case definitions work in different places," Maguire said. He said the study of the files could help the WHO understand the situation in different places which would help to improve SARS case definitions.
(Xinhua News Agency May 11, 2003)
