Military

DATE=4/2/2003

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=ASIA PNEUMONIA (LONG)

NUMBER=2-301650

BYLINE=KATHERINE MARIA

DATELINE=HONG KONG

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The World Health Organization has issued its sternest travel advisory since the start of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak. It cautioned travelers to avoid Hong Kong and southern China, which together account for more than two-thirds of the world's 18-hundred SARS cases. V-O-A's Katherine Maria reports from Hong Kong.

TEXT: The World Health Organization warns outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Hong Kong and Southern China could grow worse. But, it says, SARS outbreaks in Vietnam and Singapore have been contained.

Wednesday, he U-N agency strongly urged travelers to avoid Hong Kong and China's southern Guangdong province. W-H-O warnings often influence governments, airlines and businesses to make similar recommendations.

Hong Kong's leader, Tung Chee-Hwa, says he is not surprised by the new advisory, although he hopes it will be toned down as soon as the city's outbreak stabilizes.

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This is understandable. What W-H-O has done is a confirmation of what has been happening.. But let me emphasize my priority at this very moment is about SARS. And we need to win that battle, and we will.

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The latest W-H-O advisory comes as scientists begin new studies into why SARS continues to spread in Hong Kong. At least 708 people in the city have developed the disease, and 16 have died since early March. The government has suspended schools and quarantined more than a thousand people.

But W-H-O is most concerned about the disease's recent spread from hospitals to the community. Hundreds of residents in the Amoy Gardens apartment complex fell sick in a matter of days.

Scientists suspect some sick patients, especially those with weak immune systems or underlying illnesses, may be more contagious than others.

Dr. Yeoh Eng-Kiong, Hong Kong's secretary of health, says a man with kidney disease and SARS is thought to have been the origin of the Amoy Gardens outbreak.

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The index patient visited his brother there. And that person is a patient with renal failure (who) is immuno-suppressed, likely to carry large loads of virus.

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Scientists are also investigating whether water contaminated with waste from SARS patients helped spread the disease in Amoy Gardens.

SARS sufferers usually display flu-like symptoms, which rapidly turns into pneumonia.

One W-H-O spokesman says the agency has stocked up on an anti-viral drug that has shown some effectiveness against SARS, in case outbreaks occur in developing Southeast Asian countries. Doctors are being trained in the Philippines, Malaysia and Laos to prepare for the possibility of outbreaks.

As a result of the SARS outbreak, the United States says it will allow non-essential U-S government workers in Hong Kong and southern China and their families to return to the United States. (SIGNED)

NEB/HK/KM/KPD/FC