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medpundit |
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Friday, April 04, 2003One thing people just can't get into their heads, whether it's Ebola or SARS, is that nothing kick's an epidemic in the butt like good medical care. As it now stands, we've had 85 SARS cases here and no deaths. If you've ever been to China, and I have on three occasions, you'd know why they have all the SARS cases but about 300. Meanwhile, today the WSJournal ran TEN SARS pieces. Yeah, that's my definition of hysteria. Yes, that’s true about the quality of medical care having an impact. It impacts both the ability to take adequate care of the sick and to contain the epidemic with effective respiratory isolation measures. Here in the US, for example, we use disposable gowns and masks when entering an isolation room. I’m not sure that hospitals in every country can afford those sorts of measures. And, while there is hysteria - the school keeping students recently returned from a China trip at home, the State Department in China sending people home, etc., I still think the WHO is acting responsibly . Faced with an evolving, highly infectious disease, it’s wise to try to curtail it as much as possible. By one report, the disease results in a degree of respiratory distress severe enough to require critical care support in up to 20% of cases. That alone would put a tremendous strain on our hospital systems if the disease were allowed to go unchecked throughout the general population. And if the critical care services are taxed beyond their ability to respond, mortality goes up. In this case, an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. Meanwhile, the disease seems to be on the wane in Singapore, Australia's cases have dropped, and China has allowed the WHO to investigate their cases. And the CDC has an excellent SARS fact sheet up. posted by Sydney on 4/04/2003 09:09:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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