|
Indonesia's suspected
SARS patient escapes from quarantine
The Indonesian
government announced here Monday that a patient, who
is suspected of being infected by the Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), has escaped from
quarantine here.
"One patient has
run away to Hong Kong, fortunately, he has been
arrested by the authorities there and
hospitalized," Umar Fachmi, director general of
Preventing Infecting Disease under the Ministry of
Health and Social Welfare, said at a press
conference here.
The 47-year-old
British of Chinese descent had escaped during his
quarantine in his house here, Fachmi said.
The British citizen,
who had visited Hong Kong and Singapore before
arriving here, had been in Sulianti Suroso Hospital
in Jakarta since April 9, Fachmi added.
After being in the
hospital for few days, the patient was put into
quarantine in his house here, under the hospital's
supervision, Fachmi said.
Commenting on the
current status of Indonesia, the director said that
the country is still safe.
Regarding the three
patients suspected of being infected by SARS in the
Sulianti Suroso Hospital, he said two of them have
been in better conditions and returned home.
Fachmi also said the
Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has been
looking for another suspected SARS sufferer, who
escaped from a hospital in Bali island, and has been
deliberating a punishment.
The World Health
Organization (WHO) has categorized the developments
of the SARS cases from categories of potential,
being isolated and treated, suspected, possible
suspect and confirmed.
Bodies of British soldiers found in Iraqi
desert graves
The bodies of two
missing British soldiers have been found in shallow
graves in the Iraqi desert, The Times Newspaper
reported on Monday.
The remains of Staff
Sergeant Simon Cullingworth, 36, and Sapper Luke
Allsopp, 24, were found in al-Zubayr, about 24
kilometers (15 miles) from Iraqi southern city of
Basra, where the men had been ambushed on March 23,
just three days into the US-led war against Iraq.
There would be an
investigation into the manner of the deaths, which
is likely to take several weeks, the paper quoted a
spokeswoman for the Ministry of Defense as saying.
A full forensic
examination has been launched to determine if they
were "executed", as was controversially
alleged by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair
soon after they had disappeared, the paper said.
At a press conference
with US President George W. Bush on March27, Blair
said that the men had been summarily killed by Iraqi
fighters.
He was forced to
apologize after initially saying that after the
family of Sapper Allsopp publicly denounced this
analysis, insisting that their son had died in
combat, as his commanding officer had told them.
Blair made the
remarks after the bodies of the two men were shown
clearly on a television footage of the Qatar-based
news channel al-Jazeera.
Allsopp and
Cullingworth, both belonged to 33 Explosive Ordnance
Disposal Engineer Regiment, were the only British
servicemen who died in combat and whose bodies were
not returned immediately to Britain.
Up to now, about 31
British serviceman have been killed in this ongoing
conflict in Iraq.
UN health agency
to send more experts to China
The World Health
Organization is sending this week a second expert
team to Shanghai, China, a UN spokesperson said here
Monday.
Spokesperson Hua
Jiang told reporters at the UN headquarters in New
York that the team will monitor the outbreak of
severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in
Shanghai.
Meanwhile, the health
organization said the recent outbreaks in Canada and
Hong Kong have raised new questions concerning the
possibility of transmission from an environmental
source and its potential to move into a wider
community.
"So far, a total
of 3,547 cases with 182 deaths have been reported
from 25 countries," she said.
Presidential
voting takes place in all parts of Nigeria
The Independent
National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria has
denied insinuations that the presidential voting
conducted last Saturday was disrupted in some parts
of the country.
Abel Guobadia,
chairman of the INEC, said here at the weekend that
there was no report of any place in the country
where voting did not take place during the
governorship and presidential polls.
"I've not
received any official report from any of my men that
voting never took place in some parts of the
country, so I do not know where you got your reports
from," he said.
He confirmed that
some people were arrested for electoral malpractice
and that some INEC offices were torched and some of
its staff attacked.
"But all that
never affected the smooth conduct of the
elections," Guobadia said.
The INEC chairman
attributed the delay in announcing the results in
some states to the attitude of some party agents,
who deliberately absented themselves from the
collation centers to avoid endorsing the final
results.
He said he had
directed all resident electoral commissioners not to
be distracted by the absence or refusal of any
agents to endorse the collated results, "but to
go ahead and announce them."
He also said that by
Monday evening, the commission would be in a
position to release a sizeable number of the results
"going by the speed with which the states are
feeding INEC headquarters."
Last Saturday, over
60 million Nigerian voters cast their ballots across
Africa's most populous country to elect the
president and state governors.
Both international
and local observers as well as police forces and
soldiers were present at the polling scene to
safeguard the peaceful and smooth elections.
Some 20 political
parties had candidates standing in the presidential
race, with incumbent President Olusegun Obasanjo of
the ruling People's Democratic Party and his
opponent Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria
People's Party as the two main contenders.
The INEC has said the
election was free and fair in most states of
Nigeria.
Under the Nigerian
law, the winner of the presidential election shall
have the highest number of the votes cast at the
election and not less than one quarter of all the
votes cast in each of at least two thirds of the
states in the Federation and the Federal Capital
Territory of Nigeria.
|
