Hong Kong’s health chiefs and lawmakers rebuked hospital officials on Wednesday for not informing them quickly enough when dozens of children in paediatric wards fell ill with a mysterious respiratory illness.

Although most of the children appear to have recovered and their symptoms have been mild, the episode has triggered dark memories of the SARS epidemic of 2003 - and fears that Hong Kong’s healthcare system may not be able to cope with another outbreak heading into the peak flu season.

Lawmakers grilled health officials and managers of the Caritas Medical Center at a special legislative session, saying they had not learned the lessons from the SARS outbreak, which killed nearly 300 people in the territory in a few months.

“During SARS, we learned huge, bitter lessons. Many people died and many medical personnel were infected. Please don’t tell me we need to learn some more lessons,” said legislator Albert Cheng.

Critics and SARS victims say not enough measures were taken by health authorities in the initial stages of the SARS epidemic to prevent it from spreading here and overseas.

Thirty-one children at the hospital have come down with high fever and respiratory tract infection in the past two weeks, but they were not reported to the government until late last week.

Doctors have ruled out SARS and influenza and are carrying out more tests to find the cause of the infections. They say the illness appears to be mild and that it is more likely to be caused by a virus, not bacteria.

SLOW TO RESPOND?

The affected children are all long-term residents in two wards that take care of mentally handicapped children. Four of them still have the fever.

A handful of children had fallen ill by November 7th, but it was not until November 11th that the hospital informed the government’s Center for Health Protection.

The center was built in the aftermath of SARS epidemic to manage and provide a coordinated response to infectious diseases. Under its guidelines, hospitals have to alert the center if it discovers infections involving three or more patients.

In its defense, a hospital official said it was wrapped up in setting up infection control measures during the start of the outbreak.

“When the children fell ill at the same time, we thought it was unusual and we stepped up anti-infection measures in the ward,” said Alex Chan, a manager at Caritas.

Health officials pledged to make guidelines to hospitals clearer in the future.