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The Vietnam News

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No SARS victims found in Ho Chi Minh City

Hô Chi Minh City - Ho Chi Minh City's health service on Thursday announced that no cases with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) have been found in the city to date. Between Mar. 13-25, 10 patients with suspected SARS symptoms were admitted to municipal hospitals, however, through medical tests, they were diagnosed to have only influenza.

So far, 16 SARS patients, including 12 from the Viet Nam-France hospital and four others from the Bach Mai hospital's Tropical Medicine Institute, have been discharged, reducing the country's SARS cases to 32. The release of these patients was due to the criteria for discharging patients with SARS outlined by the Ministry of Health. Some 10 more SARS patients are expected to be released in the next two days. However, those discharged patients will be closely monitored thereafter according to the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation.

No new case of SARS has been found in Viet Nam recently although the disease has been found in different parts of the world. The Ministry of Health said it has injected 71 billion VND for the SARS control programme and provided free treatment to SARS patients. The disease claimed four lives in Viet Nam, including a French doctor, a Vietnamese doctor and two Vietnamese nurses, who had been in close contact with the first SARS patient in the Viet Nam-France hospital on Feb. 24.

All SARS patients in Viet Nam are currently hospitalised in isolation at the Viet Nam-France hospital and the Tropical Medicine Institute of the Bach Mai hospital.

Vietnam News Agency - March 28, 2003.