Thursday, April 11, 2013

Blog 9: China praised for transparency during bird flu outbreak

This week’s blog is a follow up on the H7N9 flu in China. After reading this article, I got the since that China handles things, such as crisis’ and major issues, way differently than the U.S. According to the article, China is making improvements on its promptness of diseases and with informing the family of the diseased. There was one case where it was unclear if authorities had informed the family of a patient when it was discovered he had the virus. The patient’s family only found out that he was one of the first victims of this new virus, when friends alerted him to official media reports. This was more than two weeks after he fell sick and died due to lung failure. A woman who had answered the phone at the hospital in Shanghai told a family member when they called that it is not the faculty’s responsibility to notify relatives about the diagnosis. The Communist Youth Daily newspaper commented on the issue with “The transparency of information from the government is still being called into question by the public, and the actions the government has taken have not convinced the public.” It was also recognized as a good accomplishment that the information for this recent outbreak was given for public knowledge. Beijing shared sampled with the WHO and provided timey infections and death. This is a huge improvement from the 2003 SARS outbreak, where some patients were taken out of hospitals in Beijing and driven around the city to keep them out of sight while an investigating team from the WHO toured health facilities. I find they have had much improvement over the years when dealing with diseases and outbreaks and hopefully they will continue in this matter to help prevent further outbreaks.


Page Odom
4/11/13
9:41 PM

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