Materia Medica Malaysiana

Chua: SARS control measures to cease

KUALA LUMPUR: All control measures put in place to control the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in Malaysia will cease immediately as the World Health Organisation has declared the world free from the disease.

Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng said with WHO’s latest decision to lift Taiwan from the SARS-affected list, it has declared that the chain of person-to-person transmission of the SARS virus was now broken.

“The fact that there are no SARS cases recorded in any country is good news for us and the world,” he told a press conference after officially opening the First International Case-Mix Conference in Kuala Lumpur on Monday.

Chua said the Cabinet has agreed that all screening measures at the checkpoints of the country (at the airports and the Causeway) will come to an end.

All SARS isolation wards set up in hospitals will also return to their original purposes while travellers arriving in the country would not have to fill the declaration forms anymore.

“The scanners purchased to screen travellers will be used for telemedicine projects and for video-conferencing purposes to enable patients in district clinics to contact their specialists in general hospitals. They can also be used for fever scanning purposes,” he said, adding that the machines would be placed in selected government hospitals.

“But we will continue to monitor the developments of this disease and maintain the research and surveillance agreed by the Asean+3 meeting held in Cambodia recently,” he said.