Taiwan severely affected by the SARS

With Taiwan severely affected by the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), whose impact was felt throughout the island from March to June, the Department of Health has been working to strengthen the country’s medical and public health systems to prevent another attack of the epidemic, said Chen Chien-jen, minister of the DOH.

“We were virtually fighting a holy war against something we had never known before, but our efforts have prompted the WHO to take Taiwan off its travel advisory list on June 17 and the list of affected areas on July 5, making us the country appearing on the list for the shortest time. Meanwhile, Taiwan registered a low incidence rate per 100,000 people,” Chen said.


“SARS was a crisis but also an opportunity,” he continued. “It tested our country’s medical system and provided an opportunity for us to upgrade the nation’s medical facilities.”

Now that the post-SARS era has arrived, the DOH will make sure that the government develops an emergency epidemic and biological terrorism response system and that a set of SARS response standard operational procedures is followed by major hospitals, which will be evaluated accordingly, Chen said.


Collaborating with other authorities to prevent patients from coming in and out of Taiwan is one of the DOH’s top priorities, which also include educating medical professionals about the disease, helping hospitals establish a triage system for treating communicable diseases, inspecting hospital infection control programs, stepping up disease monitoring systems and upgrading the country’s epidemic research laboratories and R&D centers, he added.

Community level

“One of our top agendas is to strengthen infectious disease prevention at the community level, where the detection and diagnosis of SARS begins. We want to integrate community effort into health care system to take care of each member of the community,” Chen said.

“Specifically,” he went on, “we want to establish a system where family doctors and community medical practitioners serve as the frontline defense against the disease and where they work with community hospitals to form a seamless healthcare network.”

Public health policies

Meanwhile, public hospitals should distinguish themselves from private hospitals and work with the government to carry out public health policies, provide help to marginalized groups and remote-area residents, and offer high-quality services for patients of infectious diseases, chronic diseases and mental illnesses, he said.

The DOH head gave credit to public hospitals for providing services during the peak of SARS to patients turned down by private hospitals, saying public hospitals should base their services on desire to serve the public instead of on revenues and profits.

The outbreak of SARS had demonstrated the inadequacies of the country’s decades-old emergency response mechanism within the country’s medical system made up of the DOH and health authorities at the county, city and town levels. Therefore, the DOH has been working to strengthen communications horizontally with related central government agencies and vertically with local health authorities, helping them develop crisis management, project assessment, health promotion and community epidemic prevention programs, he said.

No matter how hard the country’s health facilities work to prevent SARS, defense against communicable diseases ultimately rests with the people, Chen said. That’s why he’s asking people to form good health habits.

“Be sure to wash your hands a lot, and take your temperature everyday. When you have a cold, be sure to wear a mask. Exercise regularly to strengthen your immune system. Do not go to hospitals more than you need to,” Chen advised. “Good habits are the cornerstone of disease prevention.”

The fight against SARS underscored the importance of international collaboration, the health minister said. The DOH will continue to work with health organizations across the globe and to provide humanitarian aid to less developed countries to win more support from the international community in the government’s bid to invite World Health Organization professionals to establish a permanent base on the island to provide assistance to the country’s epidemic-fighting efforts, Chen said.