SARS

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Last week, health workers in China began to kill thousands of
animals in an effort to prevent the spread of SARS. Severe acute
respiratory syndrome killed more than seven-hundred-seventy people
around the world last year.

Last week, tests confirmed that a man in Guangdong province had
the first new case of SARS in China. The thirty-two-year-old
television producer was treated and released from a hospital.

The tests showed he had a virus
similar to one found in civets. Yet Chinese media reported that the
man had not eaten a civet. Civets are related to the mongoose and
are a popular food in southern China during the winter.

Researchers think activities such as killing or handling infected
animals is a likely way to spread the virus from animals to people.
The World Health Organization warned of just such a danger from
health workers killing the civets. The United Nations agency also
warned that such action could destroy important information about
the disease.

SARS first appeared in Guangdong in November of two-thousand-two.
It infected more than one-thousand-five-hundred people there. The
lung disease killed about three-hundred-fifty people in China.
Travelers spread SARS to nearly thirty countries. Eight-thousand
people were infected by the middle of last year when the last cases
appeared.

Since then, public health officials have been warning that the
disease could return. Researchers have been working to develop tests
for the virus and a vaccine to prevent it.

A report published recently in the Journal of the American
Medical Association discusses what was learned from the first SARS
outbreak. Researchers say keeping people with signs of the disease
away from the healthy population was effective in stopping the
spread.

The researchers say people who live with those suspected of SARS
should also be quarantined until health workers are sure it is safe.
Other ways to stop the spread of SARS include having health workers
wear protective clothing and masks.

Scientists also reported that the drug interferon appeared to
improve the ability of steroid medicines to reduce the effects of
SARS.

In Guangdong, officials announced a health campaign to kill rats
and cockroaches so the province would be clean for the Lunar New
Year. The Chinese New Year begins January twenty-second.

This VOA Special English Health Report was written by Nancy
Steinbach.