NZ badly prepared for return of Sars

By MARTIN JOHNSTON and JULIE MIDDLETON

Many New Zealand general practice clinics are poorly prepared for the likely return of the deadly Sars virus.

The World Health Organisation declared that the first epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome was contained in July - but its return is widely expected.

The New Zealand doctor who was in the thick of the epidemic in Hong Kong, Dr Tom Buckley, warns that while there is no sign Sars has returned, it is likely to, and soon.

A Health Ministry survey of 250 general practices in July-August found that almost all had received ample information, but only two-thirds had received protective equipment from their district health boards.

Conducted by Wellington GP Dr Sally Talbot, the survey found that 90 per cent of practices had high-protection masks. But only two-thirds had gowns and even fewer had goggles, gloves or shoe covers, although most had hats.

Only 55 per cent had disposable thermometers. Two-thirds had a Sars poster at the front door and 72 per cent had a room for infectious patients.

Sars infected more than 8000 people worldwide and killed nearly 800, mainly in Asia. New Zealand had only one probable case, a Hawkes Bay woman who recovered. A former New Zealand man was also treated in China.

After emerging in southern China last November, the epidemic was recognised as a global threat by March.

Dr Talbot referred Herald inquiries to the ministry, but said last week in a Medical Association newsletter that because infectious-disease epidemics were a public-health issue, GPs should be spared the costs of the protective equipment.

A spokesman for the ministry, Dr Pat Tuohy, said it had a role in supplying equipment to GPs in exceptional circumstances and had done so during the epidemic. It was working with GPs on how to manage needs for extra equipment and resources if it recurred.

Association spokesman Dr Peter Foley said GPs were the likely first medical contact point for people with Sars.

Dr Tuohy said GPs were told to advise people who thought they had Sars to go to a hospital as they were better equipped to handle it.

Dr Buckley, head of intensive care at Hong Kong's Princess Margaret Hospital, noted that it was now a year since Sars arose during the approach of the Northern Hemisphere winter.

But since then, research had offered few tools to combat it, he said.

Chinese authorities had done little since to place a barrier between the nation's animal population and humans. It was thought the virus arose in China's civet cats, considered a delicacy, and was transmitted to humans.