SARS wake-up call now paying off for China

By Jason Subler

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's prompt, open response to the devastating earthquake that hit Sichuan province on Monday results in large part from tough lessons learned through the SARS epidemic in 2003, a senior government adviser said on Saturday.

Beijing's quick mobilization of tens of thousands of troops and rescue workers following the disaster, together with its allowing information about it to flow freely, stands in sharp contrast to its botched handling of the SARS crisis, which officials initially covered up.

Shan Chunchang, an adviser to the State Council, or cabinet, and head of its team of experts on emergency management, told Reuters that SARS had been a wake-up call across the government.

"We realized that we had to build up a response mechanism not just for health, but for all aspects of society, including confronting natural disasters, dealing with accidents, security," Shan said in a telephone interview from Beijing.

Shan has since criss-crossed the country, following disaster wherever it strikes, looking for the lessons to be learned and formulating ways to improve the evolving response system and cooperation among government agencies.

"These few years of building that system up have paid off significantly this time," he said.

Echoing President Hu Jintao, Shan said that in the current relief effort, rescue workers must continue looking for survivors as long as there is even a glimmer of hope that more people could still be found alive.

More survivors were found on Saturday, five days after the quake, including a German tourist. China has put the known death toll at almost 29,000 but has said that it could exceed 50,000.

AIDING THE SICK, INJURED

Still, Shan stressed that in the coming days, significant resources needed to be allocated to helping survivors.

"Even though those people have been rescued, many are injured and they could start to get all sorts of diseases. We really need to ensure their health and safety," he said.

He added that the quake underlined the need to improve people's basic knowledge of survival skills and first aid.

"Across the country, people's overall awareness in terms of protecting themselves and one another is still relatively limited," he said.

Shan said he thought China deserved credit for its response to the quake, adding that he considered it fair to say that it had done a better job than the U.S. government did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"It doesn't mean we can't improve in the future, but we think we've really done our best and acted as quickly, as sincerely as we could to save the victims," he said, pointing to the 1976 earthquake in the northeastern city of Tangshan, which killed up to 300,000 people, as evidence of how far China had come.