Chinese medical and health institutions are sparing no efforts to
ensure the complete, accurate and timely reporting of SARS cases on
the Chinese mainland, said an official of China's Ministry of
Health (MOH) here Tuesday.
All hospitals in China above county level had special teams
responsible for confirming and reporting SARS cases, said Sun
Xinhua, an official of the department of disease control and
prevention under the MOH.
Health departments at various levels were requested to report SARS
cases in all hospitals within their administrative regions and then
report to their upper authorities, through which the figure was
reported to the MOH, said Sun.
To
prevent inaccurate or delayed reporting, the MOH had given strict
orders to local health authorities and disease control centers, to
ensure every town and county within their jurisdictions was
included, he said.
Sun said the reports had to include SARS cases in all
hospitalsbelonging to local governments, departments as well as the
army.
He
cited Beijing as an example, saying that all the military hospitals
in the city had been requested to make daily reports to the disease
control centers within their districts.
In
addition, the MOH had also had a rule for "zero reporting" since
April 20, said Sun. "That means, even you have zero confirmed SARS
cases, you must still make the daily report," he said.
Sun and another seven colleagues had been working around the clock,
dealing with the reports from all over China. "I believe there must
be altogether tens of thousands of people in health departments at
various levels, who are now doing similar work," hesaid.
Meanwhile, the MOH said Tuesday afternoon that it would give a
regular press conference at 4:00 p.m. each day, announcing the
latest figures for SARS cases on the Chinese mainland.
To
ensure that the daily report could be made on time, the MOH had
asked each provincial health department to submit the latest figure
no later than 12:00 midday each day, said Deng Haihua, deputy
director of the MOH information office.
"To be more specific, the provincial health departments should
report to the MOH the figure of newly confirmed SARS cases during
the 24 hours up to 8:00 p.m. one day before," said Deng.
On
April 20, MOH Executive Vice-Minister Gao Qiang told hundreds of
Chinese and foreign reporters that under the current unified
leading mechanism, accurate and prompt reports of SARS cases would
be guaranteed.
Sun said he personally felt that the health institutions at various
levels had a clearer concept of "time and accuracy".
"Compared with the underreporting and delayed reporting that
happened earlier in certain places, the clear time and accuracy
concept of local health departments is an important change and
improvement to China's current medical statistical method," he
said.
(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2003)
