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Finnish Man Dies of SARS in Beijing

Posted on: Sunday, 6 April 2003, 06:00 CDT

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

BEIJING (AP) -- A Finnish man working in Beijing died Sunday of severe acute respiratory syndrome, a Chinese health official said. It was the first death of a foreigner from SARS in China to be announced by the government.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong legislature's medical representative warned that hospitals in the territory may be unable to cope with new cases of the deadly disease, and officials reported 42 more people were infected and two more had died.

But Dr. Lo Wing-lok, an infectious disease expert and lawmaker, predicted the illness could be contained in two to three weeks by better controls to curb its spread - including the quarantine of some people who may have been infected, and mandatory checkups for others.

The deaths on Sunday of two women, ages 71 and 68, brought Hong Kong's SARS fatality toll to 22.

In Beijing, 53-year-old Pekka Aro showed symptoms of the flu-like disease after flying to Beijing from Thailand on March 23, said Liu Peilong, head of the Health Ministry's Department for International Cooperation. Liu said he was sent on April 2 to Beijing's Ditan Hospital, where he died early Sunday.

Aro worked in the Beijing office of the International Labor Organization, Liu said at a hastily called news conference.

The Finnish man's death is among five more SARS fatalities reported in China on Sunday, bringing the nation's SARS death toll to 52.

Some 40 of China's SARS deaths were reported in the southern province of Guangdong, where experts suspect the disease began. The province also accounts for most of China's more than 1,100 people sickened by the disease.

There also have been four deaths in Beijing and three in the Guangxi region west of Guangdong.

The quick announcement of Aro's death was a striking change from the communist government's earlier reluctance to release information about SARS. Foreign officials and ordinary Chinese have complained about delayed information.

The government promised on Saturday to release more information and to create a national disease warning system. That came after the country's top disease-prevention official issued a highly unusual apology for "poor coordination" in keeping the world and the Chinese public informed.

Aro's death added to possible cases of people contracting the disease outside China and carrying it to new locations. In Australia, four children who began to show symptoms after arriving from abroad - three from Canada and one from Vietnam - are hospitalized in isolation while doctors try to figure out whether they have the disease.

Beijing city health workers disinfected Aro's home immediately after he was discovered to have the illness, Liu said. He said the health workers were monitoring people who had contact with Aro to guard against further infections.

Liu said other patients were receiving treatment in hospitals, and one person has recovered and been released.

It wasn't clear whether Liu was referring to patients just in Beijing or across China.

"Their illness is basically under control. Quite a few patients have taken obvious turns for the better," Liu said.

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World Health Organization

Centers for Disease Control

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