Asia's Sars crisis deepens

China is confident the disease will be controlled

The Sars virus is continuing to claim lives in Asia as several countries struggle to tackle the virus and its repercussions.

Latest deaths from the pneumonia-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) include five in China, where 12 new cases were also reported, and four in Hong Kong, with one new infection.

In Taiwan, where a record number of new cases was reported over the weekend, the mass resignation of medical workers has put the country's healthcare system under additional strain.

Sars has killed around 643 people worldwide and infected more than 7,800 people - mostly in Asia - since it first emerged in southern China in November.

The annual assembly of the World Health Organisation (WHO) under way in Geneva is set to be dominated by discussions about Sars.

Epidemiologists from 16 Sars-hit regions agreed that most of the world's outbreaks are coming under control - although difficult struggles remain, especially in mainland China and Taiwan.

Hospital walk-out

Taiwan's efforts to fight Sars have been hit by resignations at hospitals and clinics where staff are treating Sars cases.

A spokeswoman at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second biggest city, said 124 medical workers had quit in the past week, after scores of doctors, nurses and patients were infected.

Without the support of the people, even the most powerful medical defence will collapse

President Chen Shui-bian

More than 20 staff from Taipei Municipal Hoping Hospital also left after coming out of a period of mandatory quarantine.

President Chen Shui-bian, wearing a face mask in public for the first time at the opening of Taiwan's first Sars treatment hospital, has tried to boost the morale of embattled health workers.

"Without the defence formed by front line medical workers, Sars will swallow the whole of Taiwan," he said.

On Sunday, four deaths were recorded in Taiwan, taking the island's total to 40.

China's five deaths on Monday bring the country's total to 289.

President Hu Jintao has again stressed that China wants to work with the rest of the world to eliminate Sars.

China has been criticised for under-reporting the extent of its outbreak of the disease.

WHO row

The WHO's spokesman in Beijing Bob Dietz told French news agency AFP that he was sceptical about the drop from 100 new cases daily 10 days ago to 12 new cases on Monday.

""We're wary of these figures," he said.

"We're not sure how they are being arrived at. We're not prepared yet to say that things are on a downward trend."

SARS WORLDWIDE

Known death tolls:

World: 812

Mainland China: 348

Hong Kong: 298

Taiwan: 84

Singapore: 32

Canada: 38

Source: WHO/local authorities

Global update

Meanwhile Singapore - which has the world's fourth highest Sars death toll but had hoped to be declared free of the illness - reported its first new case in 20 days on Sunday.

With Sars on the agenda at the WHO, there is also expected to be a row over Taiwan's request for observer status.

China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, is sure to oppose.

But the United States' Health and Human Services Secretary, Tommy Thompson, has suggested support for Taiwan.

"It's good for all countries, small, large, developing and developed, to have as much information about this disease as quickly and currently as possible," he said.

"That's what the observer status would give and that's why it's important for Taiwan to have it."