Tarlac girl not a SARS case, says DOH

ANGELES CITY — A 15-year-old girl, who died in a Tarlac City hospital last Monday, could not have been a case of the dreaded Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which is spreading across Southeast Asia, the Department of Health (DOH) said yesterday.

Even the Tarlac health office dismissed earlier reports that the girl, a resident of Barangay Calingcuan in Tarlac City, died of SARS.

Dr. Ricardo Ramos, chief of the Tarlac health office, said the girl, a high school junior, underwent rigorous CAT (Citizens’ Army Training) drills before experiencing week-long high fever and severe cough and "minimal pulmonary tuberculosis," as what physicians at the Central Luzon Doctors’ Hospital later found out.

Ramos clarified that although Dr. George Martinez, the girl’s attending physician, said the girl showed symptoms similar to SARS, he stressed that "they don’t fit the syndrome."

Dr. Consortia Quizon, head of the DOH’s epidemiology department, told The STAR that their inquiries also showed the Tarlac City girl had never traveled to countries where SARS cases have been reported.

"We even went a step further to find out whether she had any contact (with any person who had succumbed to pneumonia or had traveled to affected countries), but we found none," Quizon said.

Martinez said the girl could not have died of SARS because of these two factors: lack of history of travel to affected areas overseas and exposure to possible carriers of the ailment.

He said he indicated in the girl’s health certificate that she died of "acute respiratory distress syndrome, secondary to pneumonia." He said he consulted a pulmonologist, Dr. Edgardo Estanislao, on this.

"We interviewed relatives and friends of the victim and we are sure she had no exposure to SARS," Martinez said. But he added, "We are open to further investigation that the DOH might want to do."

Quizon said the DOH’s top criteria in determining SARS cases is exposure to the virus resembling paramyxovirus, which the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified as the organism causing the ailment which still has no known cure.

"We definitely have no reported cases of SARS in the Philippines yet," Quizon said.

Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit urged the public, particularly doctors to report suspected SARS cases to the DOH and its satellite offices and not to the media to avoid undue panic. (The DOH can be reached at 741-7048, 743-1937 or 0916-4665823.)

Dayrit said the fact that there are no SARS cases in the Philippines prompted the WHO to remove the country from its list of nations with such cases.

According to the WHO, SARS is a form of "atypical pneumonia" that rejects treatment. Cases have been reported in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. — With Rainier Allan Ronda