Tragic costs of delay

Fuyang has shocked the country again. Nineteen children have died there since last month before the city recently announced an outbreak of a lethal intestinal virus.

About four years ago, the city in Anhui province startled the nation with a scandal relating to fake and inferior-quality milk powder that affected more than 170 infants and killed at least a dozen of them.

The memory of the last tragedy only adds to the bitterness of the new one.

The official warning against mass intestinal virus infection clearly came too late, particularly for those more than 700 other kids who have fallen ill.

It was reported that hospitals in the city started to take in children with fever, along with blisters, ulcers in the mouth, or rashes on their hands and feet, in early March.

But it was not until last week that the local government raised the alarm against this public health crisis.

Admittedly, it took time for medical experts to confirm that it was enterovirus 71 or EV 71, based on epidemiological surveys, clinical diagnoses and lab work. Infections could lead to high mortalities in serious cases and neither vaccine nor therapeutic treatment is available.

Knowledge or the absence of it about the fatal disease might justify the cautious response from local officials. It is certainly undesirable to throw the masses into a panic before adequate information has been collected about the situation.

Yet, when there were rumors going around about the hitherto unknown disease, a business-as-usual attitude from the government would not help. Worse, the government's efforts to play down the possible severity of the ongoing public health crisis may even mislead some people to ignore risks that they can otherwise avoid.

Media reports showed that, in spite of the outbreak of the mysterious disease, the concerned local officials insisted that the rate of fatality was normal compared with the level in previous years.

In the face of such a mass intestinal virus infection, the alarm was raised so late that the number of death had already soared to 19. Early warnings could be able to prevent the disease from spreading so wild.

The outbreak of SARS in 2003 had bitterly alerted the country to the urgency of building a sound emergency response system to deal with public health crises.

The Fuyang case shows again how far we still need to progress in that direction.