May 2003

China Notes #9

SARS has no doubt been the top item in China news in recent weeks, and you may have heard about foreign teachers, Amity and otherwise, leaving China.

Recent news stories may have created the impression that SARS is sweeping China like a modern-day version of the bubonic plague, so it may help to start by placing SARS in perspective. While SARS is a serious problem, so far it only afflicts a fairly small number of people. There are actually several features of SARS we can be thankful for:

• While SARS is contagious, it does not spread like wildfire, so even in heavily affected cities like Hong Kong and Beijing the number of new cases per day has been in the dozens or low hundreds rather than much higher figures.
• While SARS is quite a serious illness, the great majority of people who get it do recover. Current figures for Hong Kong suggest about a 90% recovery rate. (This is lower than the 95-96% rates being publicized earlier, but still relatively low.)
• It seems that a sustained public effort can eventually turn the tide against the disease. Several nations with smaller scale outbreaks, including Vietnam, have already been able to stop its spread. Here in Hong Kong, the city which has experienced the worst SARS outbreak so far, the number of new cases has dropped significantly over the past week, and more people are now leaving the hospitals than going in. Even in China's Guangdong province, where the outbreak apparently began, the disease has largely been contained. So there is good reason to believe that it can also be brought under control in China and other places.

Because SARS is a new disease, no one is yet entirely sure how much it will spread or whether it might become more virulent. Also, nurses and doctors are disproportionately exposed to SARS. In Hong Kong this has pushed the healthcare system to the limits of its resources, as many medical staff are incapacitated by the disease for weeks. In China, the concern is that SARS outbreaks may seriously affect the ability of local healthcare networks to provide proper care for those people who do become ill, and this could in turn lead to panic.

Statistically, the risk of an Amity teacher actually getting SARS is still very small. In most parts of China cases of SARS are relatively few; even in the worst-hit city, Beijing, only a small percentage of the population is affected. However, Amity has chosen to approach this issue with a high degree of caution, in part because of the uncertainty surrounding this new disease, and in part because of the difficulty of knowing precisely what the actual threat level is in each location where Amity teachers are placed. So Amity is currently taking the following steps vis-á-vis Amity teachers:

• Providing updated information to help teachers stay on top of the situation and make good decisions.
• Encouraging teachers to have a plan for departure should they need to leave.
• Supporting teachers who decide that it would be better to leave China early for the summer than to stay. (Often this decision hinges on the needs of host schools—which feel a huge sense of responsibility for the well-being of their guest Amity teachers—as much as on immediate threat to Amity teachers from SARS.)

A number of Amity teachers have already decided, in consultation with Amity and their sending agencies, that it would be best to leave China early, and some have already departed. No doubt more will decide to go over the next few weeks.

You could be in prayer about the following things:

• Pray for teachers to make wise decisions about whether to stay or go, for safe journies for those who do leave, and for good health for those who stay. Similarly, pray for new teachers who are now deciding whether or not to come teach in China.
• Pray for those who are sick, for the ability of their bodies to fight off this illness.
• Pray for those most at risk, the nurses and doctors who are faithfully attending to the sick even knowing that this exposes them to the illness themselves. Their example has been a source of strength to us all in Hong Kong, mainland China, and no doubt other places as well.
• Pray for guidance for government officals who often have to make hard choices about the lengths to which they should go (quaratine and so forth) in stopping the spread of this disease.

Plans for interpretation assignment

The end of June marks ten years in Hong Kong for us, and also the end of our current appointment. During this time, I feel that I have been able to make a number of useful contributions to Amity's Teachers Projects, and Wei Hong has completed two seminary degrees, and also worked in both a church and the Lutheran Theological Seminary library. However, we both feel that it is time to move on to other tasks; in particular, I never intended to stay away from regular classroom teaching this long. So we are currently in consultation with the PC(USA) about a new position, almost certainly back in China. The most likely scenario is that we would go to Nanjing early next year for a combination of teaching, library, and administrative work. In the meantime, we will be back in the United States from July until January, based from September on at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. We hope to see many of you during our time in the United States and will give you more details (contact information and so forth) as we have them. So, until then…

God's peace,

Don and Wei Hong

The 2003 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, page 173