http://globeandmail.ca/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030502.wxsars0503/BNStory/Front/

Cost-cutting measures fueled SARS spread

By




 CAROLYN ABRAHAM AND LISA PRIEST
>From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Saturday, May. 3, 2003

Just 16 months before SARS hit Toronto, the Ontario government deemed the last
of its leading lab scientists redundant and sent them packing as it scoffed at
the prospect of any new disease threatening the province.
The timing of government layoffs on Oct. 18, 2001, left five top microbiologists
in utter disbelief. Walkerton's tainted-water scandal was a fresh memory.
Bioterror threats loomed after Sept. 11 and the West Nile virus had made its
Ontario debut.
But the Ontario government declared at the time that the province no longer
needed their scientific expertise, insisting there were no new tests to develop:
"Do we want five people sitting around waiting for work to arrive?" said Gordon
Haugh, a Health Ministry spokesman. "It would be highly unlikely that we would
find a new organism in Ontario."
This February, a new organism turned out to be just a plane flight away.
The SARS virus made a mockery of government predictions and exposed the
weaknesses of a stripped-down public-health system that many had warned was
headed for crisis, a Globe and Mail investigation has found.
"SARS was an accident waiting to happen ? because of the priorities of the
government, the cost-cutting measures, the conditions were great for SARS to
take hold," said William Bowie, an infectious disease specialist at the
University of British Columbia who answered Toronto's cry for help during the
early weeks of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome....

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