Post and Courier(NC): China shuns doctor who told SARS truth, WHO says

Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Chicago Tribune

BEIJING--The World Health Organization said Tuesday that China is sharing more information in the fight against SARS, but on one richly symbolic issue the government here continues to shun the truth: how a maverick doctor exposed the official cover-up of Beijing's epidemic.

When Beijing authorities were asked at a news conference about recognizing the contribution of the semi-retired military surgeon, who revealed to the world in April that scores of cases of SARS were being kept hidden, a Health Ministry official evaded the question. Pinned down, he said he had no information to share about Dr. Jiang Yanyong.

"We have not acquired any information about him in a direct way," Han Demin, deputy chief of the Beijing Health Bureau, said Tuesday. "I think after getting some direct information, I can further answer your question at (next week's) press conference."

In the foreign press, and in one article in a Chinese magazine called Caijing, Jiang gets much of the credit for blowing the whistle on the scandalous cover-up that led to the firing of the health minister and mayor. His tip also led to the WHO's aggressive efforts to investigate what was really happening in Beijing's hospitals, and, ultimately, to the promises made by the highest levels of the Chinese government to deal openly with the epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The Chinese magazine declared in its current issue: "We have to say it isn't only Dr. Jiang who made reports on the SARS epidemic in China more transparent but we should admit he was one of the key people to accelerate the speed."

It concluded: "He saved many people's lives."

But most people in China don't read Caijing, a business biweekly with a small circulation and a reputation for daring reportage. And they don't have access to newspapers like the Singapore Straits Times, which said in a recent column, "In other countries, Dr. Jiang would probably have been lauded as a national hero."

Instead, Jiang remains an unknown figure in China, neither praised nor punished, but who has been asked by the government not to talk to the press without prior permission, though he spoke briefly with a reporter on Tuesday.

Jiang said he didn't know why the government pretended that he didn't exist. Ask at the next press conference, he said.

Without wide dissemination of Jiang's story in China, the government has been able to shift gears to wage a public health war against SARS without needing to acknowledge fully the extent of the cover-up and the other bureaucratic failings that have led Beijing to become the world's most SARS-infected city.

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