The SARS scare today spun out of control in Pune when residents of a society in Bibwewadi where the relatives of three SARS-affected people from the D’Silva family had been quarantined vented their ire on health officials, demanding that the family be moved out immediately. They threatened direct action if the officials didn’t listen to them. This is the first incident when suspected SARS patients have faced social ostracisation. The D’Silvas — Stanley, Vimal and Julie — were staying at a relative’s flat at this society in Kumar Park when they were diagnosed to be suffering from SARS. Two women go past a hospital in Kolkata where a SARS patient has been admitted. Reuters When the agitated society residents told Salunkhe about the social stigma and mental agony they had to face on account of suspected SARS patients staying in their society, Salunkhe looked quite shocked. ‘‘Please don’t behave in such a manner. Just go to the websites of World Health Organisation to dispel such doubts,’’ he said. The society residents had upped the ante on Saturday by declaring their intention to hold a rasta roko on Sunday morning. Though the residents dropped their plan at the last minute, they made life hell for Dr R V Bhagwat of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) who had come to the society to call on the quarantined patients. They also gave local MLA Vishwas Gangurde, who had arrived at the society with a few corporators, a hard time. Irked by the fact that their representative had not cared to visit the society till Sunday, the 10th day after the SARS outbreak, members mounted pressure on Gangurde to give orders for shifting of the D’silva relatives. Later the residents said the authorities were to be blamed for all the chaos. Though Dr Anil Ravetkar, health chief of the Pune Municipal Corporation, had visited the society on April 17 when the first case of SARS was detected in the city, no efforts were made to educate the residents or deal with their fears about SARS. In the evening, Dr Salunkhe declared Pune virtually free of any SARS threat, lifting the quarantine of Stanley D’silva’s relatives. He said the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, had certified all of them to be perfectly normal. ‘‘The relatives in any case had completed the maximum incubation period required for observation,’’ he said. Besides, he said all the four SARS patients would be discharged from Naidu Hospital for Infectious Diseases on Tuesday.
