By Kate Saunders
Special to WTN News (15 May 2003)
Reports from Lhasa indicate that while Chinese and foreign tourist groups are successfully being prevented from entering the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), large numbers of individual Chinese from SARS-affected areas including Guangzhou and Beijing are arriving in the TAR to seek a safe haven from SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). The TAR is one of five provincial-level regions in China free of SARS, according to the Chinese media (www.tibetinfor.com, 9 May). Some of the new arrivals to Lhasa are being quarantined in quarters commandeered by the authorities.
Fears about the rapid spread of the epidemic have led to an unexpected official encouragement of traditional Tibetan Buddhist practices and medicine. In recent years, increasing numbers of Chinese, particularly urban intellectuals (and allegedly including former Party chief Jiang Zemin), have become interested in Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. The fact that Tibet is one of the only areas of China said to be free of SARS, and that traditional Tibetan medicine has been hailed in the official media as a possible cure for the condition, appears to have increased its allure for many Chinese in recent weeks.
A Tibetan from Lhasa now based in the US said: “Tibetans in Lhasa are being encouraged by their Party work units to wear amulets of Tibetan medicine round their necks to prevent SARS. In some areas of Amdo [the traditional Tibetan area now incorporated into Qinghai province] local officials are asking monks to organise prayers at the monastery for protection against SARS. This crisis appears to have led to some forms of official sanction of Tibetan religious and traditional practices that would not have been as acceptable before.” The Chinese authorities have long emphasised the “superstitious” and “backward” elements of Tibetan religious belief and practices – the Chinese Communist Party requires its members to adopt “a proletarian world outlook of materialism and atheism” (statement from the Third Work Forum, Beijing, 1994).
The Tibetan Medical Factory in the TAR recently speeded up production of Tibetan medicine and incense sticks in order to increase people?s resistance against the SARS virus, according to a report published on the official website www.tibetinfor.com on 9 May. A sales manager at the factory, Yang Jing, was quoted by the news agency Agence France-Presse as saying that three times the number of its “changjie” (medical herbs) pills were being sold, including in Beijing and Guangzhou (9 May, AFP). Incense sticks are frequently difficult to obtain in Lhasa now due to the high demand.
Tibetan traditional medicine (TTM) is inextricably linked with Tibetan Buddhism and also ancient Tibetan cultural patterns. Before the Chinese authorities took control of Tibet, Tibetan medicine schools were either monasteries or closely related to religious institutions, although there were also a number of lay TTM doctors. Following the economic reforms of the 1980s onwards, the Chinese authorities have focused on the revitalisation of this secular tradition of TTM, resulting in an emerging commercialisation of Tibetan medicine driven and sponsored by the state. Chinese traditional medicine has also been promoted by the authorities during the SARS crisis for building up resistance and strengthening the immune system.
SARS fears grow in Tibet
There are high levels of fear in many Tibetan areas about the SARS virus, which is being referred to by many Tibetans as ?the Chinese disease”. Inspection teams have been sent to the TAR from China in an attempt to prevent the spread of the epidemic. One inspection team is based on the road from Golmud in Qinghai to Lhasa, and over the past week has been stopping vehicles to check its occupants for signs of high fever, one of the main symptoms of SARS. A high proportion of those stopped en route are Chinese and Hui Chinese (Muslims), travelling into the TAR to seek work. Travellers who are found to have a temperature deemed unacceptably high are not being allowed to travel any further, and are sent back.
Vehicles travelling between towns and cities or through the Nepal border are generally required to be disinfected with a chlorine (bleach) based spray of indeterminate composition and efficacy. The driver is then given a certificate of disinfection that must be shown at the following town, where the vehicle is disinfected again. Travellers leaving through the Nepal border by land are required to take an axillary (armpit) temperature reading and fill out a certificate. A team of doctors are on duty at the Gonggar international airport near Lhasa. While Chinese tourists and foreigners are blocked from entering the TAR, the border is porous to individual Chinese people.
A Western health worker who has travelled in Tibet recently said: “Most of the public health efforts in the TAR are geared less at meaningful measures of prevention and mostly at damage control and accountability. Measures such as spraying vehicles with chlorine, for instance, are ineffective in preventing SARS. Paper trails are kept for all patients reporting to hospital if a doctor saw an asymptomatic patient before the patient became ill, it is likely that the doctor would be disciplined. Doctors will be made accountable if there are any cases of SARS.”
A “human-made” disaster
The epidemic of SARS in China has undermined the legitimacy of the Communist Party after Beijing both attempted to cover up the outbreak and failed to prevent its spread, and it has also exposed the inadequacies of the health care system, particularly in rural areas. The deficiencies in the health care system in Tibet have been acknowledged officially a report on www.tibetinfor.com on 9 May quotes Zhao Bingli, the vice-minister of the state family planning commission, who is currently supervising the anti-SARS campaign in the TAR, as referring to the “under-developed medical treatment facilities” there.
Asian specialist Joshua Moldavin, professor of Asian Studies and Human Geography at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, said in an article in the International Herald Tribune on 8 May that the spread of SARS to the Chinese hinterland is a “human-made” disaster that highlights the failure of a system that depends on the market to provide health care. “The SARS epidemic is the result of a particular development strategy one that has principally benefited a minority, while negatively affecting the poor majority. The [economic] reforms have undermined many positive gains of the Maoist period in social welfare. While China?s growing elite now has access to advanced health facilities, hundreds of millions of peasants no longer have even rudimentary health facilities. It is into this void that SARS has emerged. In China’s 2,000 counties, each averaging half a million people, there is often just one county hospital providing advanced health care. Thus, the spread of SARS into rural hinterlands will hit over-stretched hospitals and limit access to urgent care for other maladies.”
This is one in a series of independent reports by Kate Saunders commissioned by the Australia Tibet Council, Free Tibet Campaign and the International Campaign for Tibet.
