Ten years after SARS, what has China learned? (2)

However, authorities need to make persistent efforts to satisfy people who have become much more aware of their right to knowledge regarding public health issues.

Although the government learned a great deal from the SARS outbreak, it still demonstrates signs of immaturity. The Shanghai government has been singled out for not notifying the public about the two H7N9 deaths until nearly half a month after the deaths occurred.

The city also failed to provide details regarding 14,000 dead pigs that have been discovered floating on the Huangpu River in recent months. The river is a major source of Shanghai's drinking water.

Although the municipal government has told its residents not to worry about the quality of their drinking water, it has failed to reply to queries about the origin of the pigs and how they ended up in the river without being discovered.

Since the bird flu cases occurred in the same city and its adjacent regions shortly after the pigs were spotted, theories about possible connections between the two have arisen.

Although authorities in Shanghai said this week that no bird flu virus was detected from samples of dead pigs taken from the river, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it has not ruled out pigs as the carrier of the disease.

The farmers responsible for dumping the pigs should not escape blame. The pigs were reportedly dumped in the river by farmers from nearby Zhejiang Province, as the farmers were unable to sell the dead pigs to unscrupulous "meat processors" after local police cracked down on such activities.

Although the government does provide compensation for farmers whose animals perish, such compensation is only provided to large-scale farmers, who represent a fraction of China's agricultural industry.

The fragmented nature of the agricultural sector also makes regulation difficult to enforce, as multiple food safety scandals have demonstrated in recent years.

If there is anything that SARS has taught China and its government, it's that one cannot be too careful or too honest when it comes to deadly pandemics. The last 10 years have taught the government a lot, but it is far from enough.

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