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During the SARS emergency, the international media found out, for the first time, that China lacked sufficient medications, medical staff and hospital facilities to properly service their own population. Like many other things in China, the medical system was mostly a sham. After graduating from medical school, the best educated medical professionals in China went to the west to work. The World Health Organization estimated that only about 4% of China’s medical professionals were prepared for a disease like SARS. And the medical staff was severely undermanned. Today, according to China’s Ministry of Health (MOH), “In most countries, the ratio of the number of nurses to the total population is about 0.5 percent, but the ratio in China is only 0.1 percent.” I documented China’s response to the SARS epidemic in a Washington Times commentary under the headline “China’s Ham-Handed SARS Response: Omen of The Future In Disease Control?” Recall the Bird Flu crisis? Phases One, Two and Three were used again. Hey, when you have 1.3 Billion people you can’t have a complicated play book. And forget about innovation. When an American football quarterback would call an audible for perfectly valid reasons; China is stuck. The only question China’s government leaders face is, what Phase do you think we are in? In the current food and product safety crime, China is now launching Phase Three. Zheng Zeguang and Li Dongsheng are apparently two of the point men. China launched Phase Three of the food safety scare early because there are other emergencies to handle. Hollywood big shots are already calling the 2008 Summer Olympics the “Genocide Games” because of China’s intransigence and denial of the genocide in Darfur. China’s President Hu Jintao heard about it from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the G-8 meeting and the next week from the King and PM during a state visit to Sweden. My bet is, given China’s record on human rights, that Hu Jintao’s first reaction normally would be to ignore Canada and China. But these are not normal times. What if Canada and Sweden boycotted the Beijing Olympics? Losing those two countries would be a tragedy. But Canada and Sweden might convince others to pull out. Add the Hollywood talk of the “Genocide Games” and that could be enough to ruin China’s party next summer. So China has a few other crises to handle yet in the near term. Blood plasma has now been found to be adulterated and contaminated. Some has been found to be toxic. And the genocide of Darfur looms. With the Olympics only a year away, China needs to get the food scare settled quickly. We are now in Phase Three.
http://peace-and-freedom.blogspot.com/ John E. Carey is the former president of International Defense Consultants, Inc.
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