Friday, 09-May-2003

BEIJING (AP) -- China's SARS data has serious flaws because the information does not show how half of the country's patients caught the highly contagious respiratory illness, a World Health Organization spokeswoman said Saturday.

"Right now the situation is that we have a whole load of people, and we don't know where they got the disease," WHO spokeswoman Mangai Balasegaram told The Associated Press. "The problem with the data is that there are holes in it."

It's not exactly clear why information is so lacking about China's SARS patients, she said, but suggested that some hospitals and health workers might not have been trained to question patients correctly.

"That means you don't understand what's going on," she added. "The epidemic might be flying off in one direction, and you might not know about it."

Balasegaram said health officials need to find out "where the people were living, where they went and who they contacted." She added that Beijing was improving its data and WHO officials were still trying to figure out why the city is having problems.

China has been criticized for dragging its feet on releasing information on SARS after the often-deadly disease struck the country in November. SARS has killed at least 230 people in China and infected more than 4,800, according to the Health Ministry. Nearly 2,200 of the cases are in Beijing.

Worldwide, SARS has killed at least 519 people and infected 7,200 others.

http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/bb/Asars-china.Rod4_DyA.html

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