Korea yet to recover from MERS completely

By Chung Ah-young

Despite the declaration that the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) officially came to an end on Dec. 23, Korea has a long way to go before mending the holes in its medical system to stem the recurrence of such infectious diseases, analysts said.

The government set aside most of next year’s 78.6 billion won budget for prevention of epidemics, for establishing negative pressure isolation rooms and quarantine facilities.

However, experts said that upgrading facilities is not the cure-all solution and more fundamental changes are needed.

“The problem is lack of a control tower and leadership,” said Lee Yoon-hyun, professor of Namseoul University, at a recent seminar.

Despite the calls for lifting the status of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) to a higher office, the government has failed to do this, he said.

The vague role and inter-agency relationships had been blamed for the failure in quickly bringing MERS under control early on.

The outbreak, the largest outside Saudi Arabia, left 38 people dead and inflicted many scars on Korean society.

The infection broke out on May 20 when a 67-year-old man tested positive for the virus after returning from the Middle East earlier that month. Following that first patient, a total of 186 people became infected with MERS, with more than 16,000 being quarantined in isolation wards or at home.

Real changes yet to come

Woo Seok-gyun, chairman of policy committee of the Korean Federation of Medical Activist Groups for Health Rights, said that after the MERS outbreak, the government came up with some measures but most of them have not been put into practice.

“The government has dragged its feet on implementing the measures because it only cares about the interests of the medical industry led by large hospitals,” Woo said.

Woo also said Korea has the lowest patient-to-nurse ratio among OECD nations, at 0.28 nurses per patient. The OECD average is 1.25. This means one nurse cares for three times as many patients as in the average advanced nation.

“Hospitals don’t want to increase the number of nurses which puts more of a burden on them. Also they don’t want to limit the number of visitors because they are related to revenue for the stores which are housed in the hospitals,” he said.

The disease quickly spread in the early stages which was crucial to curb further infections because of poor handling of the disease due to a lack of transparency.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare had refused to announce the list of MERS-affected hospitals for more than two weeks, worsening the public fear.

It will take time before “Korean hospital culture” will change. As it stands, family members take care of patients in wards, unlike in other developed countries, in which the nursing staff takes care of patients. During the MERS outbreak, many were exposed to the disease while staying in ordinary wards with other patients.

To prevent hospital-acquired infections, hospitals are seeking to encourage visitors to register at the entrance.

For its part, the government plans to set up negative-pressure isolation wards by 2020 at large hospitals nationwide to prevent cross-contamination from room to room in the case of future outbreaks.

To effectively quarantine infected patients, hospitals with more than 300 beds will be required to create negative pressure isolation units where contaminated air can be sucked out of the wards immediately. It was found that not many large hospitals here have such facilities.

Also, the government plans to hire 20 specialists for disease prevention every year for the next three years and dispatch them to regional governments.