Leyte patient not a SARS case, say health authorities

TACLOBAN CITY — Local health officials have declared that a 40-year-old female medical worker from Taiwan now confined at an isolation room in the Eastern Visayas Regional Medical Center (EVRMC) here is not a suspected case of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome).

Milagros Bacho-Bacus, regional director of the Department of Health, said the patient does not even have SARS symptoms like high fever and cough.

She said that when the patient was admitted to the EVRMC, she was complaining of difficulty in breathing, which was later traced to diabetes.

Bacus said the woman was placed in the SARS isolation room only to prevent panic and unfounded fears because she just arrived from Taiwan.

"We have to quarantine her to complete a 14-day isolation, and if we see that she is not afflicted with the disease, we will discharge her immediately," Bacus said.

The patient’s X-ray results as well as blood and tissue samples will also be sent to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Muntinlupa City for further laboratory examination, she added.

The patient, a midwife who worked in Taiwan, arrived here last April 26 for a vacation and placed herself under voluntary home quarantine for nine days. However, she complained of difficulty in breathing and vomiting the other day, prompting relatives to call the DOH’s SARS hotline.

In a radio interview the other day, Ligaya Anacta Acosta, DOH-Region 8 information officer, said private hospitals had refused to admit the patient after learning that she was a balikbayan.

In a related development, no one among the 20-man Vietnamese crewmen of the MV Vinh Hoa that docked at the BREDCO port in Bacolod City last Monday, has manifested any SARS symptoms.

Alien control officer Mita Chuvy Arguelles said the crewmembers were immediately checked by Dr. Hector Torre, medical quarantine officer, and told not to disembark from the vessel.

The vessel from Saigon, Vietnam brought in 7,000 metric tons of rice for Negros Oriental, which is part of the approved 400,000-MT importation to meet the rice supply deficit.

Meanwhile, 21 crewmembers of a cargo bulk carrier, which docked at the Visayan Trading Corp. port in Pulupandan, Negros Occidental, were also not allowed to disembark.

The vessel, MV Ansac Orient, from Shenzhen, China, was here to pick up 25 metric tons of raw sugar for transport to the United States.

Torre gave assurances that none of the crewmen has shown any SARS symptoms. — With Antonieta Lopez