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MERS White Paper as ‘wrong answer note’

Posted July. 30, 2016 07:12,   

Updated July. 30, 2016 07:18

한국어

A total of 186 people were infected and 38 died in Korea last year due to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS. The government’s negligent responses including its suggested tips for preventing the disease such as "refraining from consumption of camel meat and milk" rather caused immense damage and chaos to the nation. Sense of fear gripped daily routines of the Republic of Korea like scenes from a Hollywood "disaster movie."

The Health and Welfare Ministry published on Friday the "2015 MERS White Paper: Learning Lessons from MERS" that contains records and assessment of 217-day response to the disease. It came one year after the "effective end" of the MERES outbreak on July 28, 2015. The 480-page white paper reaffirms lack of leadership and shoddy disease control system in some contents, such as “No one displayed leadership to spearhead control efforts by taking full responsibility in the course of controlling the disease” and “People who worked to tackle situations were lacking, but too many organizations demanded debriefing on situations.” The white paper also contains claims seeking to blame others, such as “One-voice principle collapsed due to a metropolitan government’s independent action,” blaming the Seoul metropolitan government for the fiasco as suggested in some parts of the report.

The white paper contains information suggesting that the government discussed "political judgement" to declare an early end of the MERS epidemic, in defiance of the World Health Organization’s guidelines. Unfortunately, some people likewise failed to recognize the severity of the situation and to learn lesson, even after suffering immense damage without following the principle. Whenever a crisis situation happens, measures such as reinforcement of manpower and organizations on the government are always mentioned. In January this year, the white paper made several suggestions -- the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention should be elevated to the Disease Control and Prevention Administration, a vice-ministerial level organization, to make it independent (from the health ministry); the "bureau of infection management at medical institutions" should be established; and the "regional public health offices" should be expanded over the long term.

Then who should be responsible for the MERS debacle? Only nine working-level officials were given penalty severer than suspension of duty as a result of an inspection by the Board of Audit and Inspection. Moon Hyung-pyo, who resigned as Health and Welfare Minister, was appointed as the head of the National Pension Service late last year. The Health and Welfare Ministry, which published the MERS White Paper, presented awards to 40 people who contributed to treatment and control of MERS on the day the white paper was released. Deep reflection and atonement would be hardly adequate, but a relay of compliments has effectively unfolded on one hand. Korea will need to at least revisit errors to create a ‘wrong answer note’ in order not to repeat the same mistake all over again.



고미석기자 mskoh119@donga.com