Patten: China still hiding information about SARS
China is still hiding information about the deadly flu-like disease known as Sars, the European Union’s external relations commissioner said today.
Chris Patten said it was clear China had been less than truthful about Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
“I hope this will be the last occasion on which the international community will have to call for much greater transparency from China,” he said during a visit to Canberra, Australia.
“I don’t think they have told everything that has happened with Sars.”
His comments come a day after World Health Organisation officials said China had not fully reported Sars outbreaks at military hospitals and probably had far more cases of the disease in Beijing than authorities have acknowledged.
Sars is believed to have originated in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, neighbouring Hong Kong. More than 3,000 people have fallen ill worldwide and at least 162 have died.
China has reported 65 Sars deaths and more than 1,300 infections. But outsiders have accused the communist government of underreporting the number of cases and failing to release other important information promptly.
Mr Patten, who as Britain’s last colonial governor of Hong Kong presided over the territory’s return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, said China should realise there was no loss of face from telling the world the true extent of the disease.
“What does produce a loss of face is when the world isn’t told about something which is going to affect everybody else with consequences that we are perhaps seeing already,” he said. “I don’t think the people in Hong Kong know what hit them with Sars.”
