Government sits on offers of outside help
By Jung Min-ho
While Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) appears to be spiraling out of control, the government is reluctant to allow international specialists in to help.
By doing so, the government may be jeopardizing more lives and risking a long battle with the deadly, highly infectious virus, after three people have died from it to date.
The World Health Organization said Thursday (KST) that it “expects more MERS cases” in Korea.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare stands in the way.
Speaking to The Korea Times, a source, who refused to be named, said the WHO is willing and ready to send a rapid response team of epidemiologists to Korea.
The source said that the WHO is waiting for an approval from the ministry, which has not made the call.
By letting external specialists take charge, the credibility of its ability could get hurt; it also poses a political risk after the ministry obviously failed to properly respond initially.
Nonetheless, many virology and infectious disease specialists are advising the Korean government to be open to help from outside before it is too late.
In an interview with Reuters, Alimuddin Zumla, a University College London professor of infectious diseases and international health, said, “We need more global attention and more international collaboration.
“They should get a multi-disciplinary team over to help sequence (the genes of) the virus and see if it’s becoming more virulent. They should do that as soon as possible.”
With the problem increasingly becoming more serious, the ministry should start cooperating with other countries and outside experts to slow down progression of the disease and to ultimately develop drugs to treat it.
In fact, it was Saudi Arabia’s reluctance to seek help from outside that spread the virus further beyond its border after the virus was first discovered in a human in 2012.
When a surge in MERS cases was reported in Saudi Arabia last year, then-Health Minister Abdullah al-Rabiah insisted that it was not necessary to change preventive measures. The result was a growth in the number of MERS patients.
The Korean authorities should think about whether they are making the same mistake. A few years later, this could be recalled as the “golden time” that they could have used to save more lives.