There was great joy in Tramore, Co Waterford, last night when it emerged that athletes from the Philippines whom the town was due to host for the Special Olympics will be arriving after all. Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent, reports.
The team's travel plans had been put in jeopardy last week when the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, decided athletes from five SARS-affected countries, including the Philippines, should not be invited to the games next month.
He had indicated, however, that affected countries would be allowed attend if they were removed from the World Health Organisation's list of infected regions 10 days before the games began. The Philippines has now been removed from that list. Four other regions due to send teams to the games are still on the WHO list. These are China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.
Ms Nora Widger, chairwoman of Tramore's Special Olympics host town committee, said she was delighted at the news on the Philippines. "Everybody is delighted, particularly for the athletes," she said.
The State's SARS expert group, which made the original recommendation to the Minister, met again yesterday. They considered a document from officers of the faculty of public health medicine at the Royal College of Physicians, which said the risk posed by athletes would be extremely low.
"For example, for Singapore the risk of a case occurring in any of the 51 delegates in the 10 days after entry to Ireland is 0.0001 or one in 10,000," it said.
The dean of the faculty is Dr Fenton Howell, one of the public health doctors currently on strike.
The document added: "The number of delegates coming in for the Special Olympics is very small compared with the number of persons from affected countries entering the country for other reasons."
However, the expert committee refused to change its original decision after reading the submission.
The WHO's clinical management co-ordinator for SARS, Dr Mark Salter, said the decision not to invite athletes from SARS-affected countries to travel to Ireland was unnecessary and disappointing.
He told RTÉ news that SARS was having an unnecessary negative economic impact on tourism, trade and travel.
Meanwhile, the British government yesterday announced it would fund the Iraqi team's journey to the host town of Larne, Co Antrim.