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| SARS prevention in rural Beijing |
| CCTV.COM 2003-05-25 14:05:28 |
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While the number of SARS cases are on the wane in cities, great challenges remain in China's vast rural areas.
A testing and registration desk can be seen at the entrance of almost every village in China. Those on duty are responsible for disinfecting every vehicle coming in and out. Temperature checks are required for everyone entering. The staff also ask visitors where they're going and whom they're seeing in the district to keep track of all new comers.
There's much more to prevention work.
"All together we have 18 such vans to ensure each village has one. We've adopted this patrolling system to discover patients with fever as early as possible. The system makes sure that we move rather than patients move," said Jiao Xin, director of Daxing District Medical Center, Beijing.This van is familiar sight. They're on 24－hour patrol to give emergency diagnosis to those who show suspected symptoms.
An old man was among those who were discovered to have a fever a few days ago. He was diagnosed for common cold but he's still required to have medical observation at home. The medical patrol will check him daily for two weeks. The system has proven effective in rural areas in discovering suspected cases and reduce the possibility of being infected in hospitals.
"According to my records, so far we've checked 25 people in our village. Some have pneumonia, some colds, some common respiratory problems. If those people are walking around, they're more vulnerable to SARS. So we make house calls to avoid risks," said Dr. Liu Dongyun, medical patrol.
Besides the patrolling system, the district has a complete health care network well established before the SARS outbreak. It has enabled them to cope with the crisis. Such health care service centers can be found in every village. The center has a medical history of every villager in its jurisdiction. The center now is responsible for educating the villagers in basic medical knowledge and SARS prevention, as well as giving them regular check－ups.
"Altogether there are 148 health service centers. Each one can cover 3,000 to 5,000 people," said Wang Peihua, director of Huangcun Village Health Care Service Ctr. of Daxing District, Beijing
The center was built by local government. Diagnostic and regular checkups are free. Villagers only have to pay for medicine. They like the arrangement.
"I'm very pleased. I just make a call and the doctor comes. It's very convenient," said a Daxing resident.
Besides these efforts from the local government, villagers have started their own monitoring system, keeping an eye on each other for suspected symptoms. They've also made their living quarters cleaner and healthier.
"In the past, the disordered garbage dumping is great potential threat to our health, now every household formed a habit to dump the garbage at designated places and will be handled safely," said another Daxing resident.
With all these measures in place, the Daxing District of Beijing has not had a single SARS case so far. Panic over the disease may be slowing down in the city, but there's no sign of complacency setting in among residents here. Their approach shows that continued vigilance in both cities and rural areas is the only way to bring the SARS virus under control.
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Editor: Han Ling CCTV.com
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