China has taken "very positive" efforts in mobilizing people to fight severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), but the health authorities need to do more to allay public fears, World Health Organization (WHO) China representative Henk Bekedam told Xinhua in Beijing Thursday.

The health authorities in Beijing should provide more details of SARS patients and how they contracted the disease so as to reduce unnecessary public panic, said Bekedam.

Anyone with a fever should go to a clinic and see a doctor, regardless of whether they have SARS or not, instead of traveling and going for work, he added.

While noting that in the last 10 to 20 years, China has not invested enough in its health system, he believed that the fight against SARS will lead to an improvement in the health system of the country.

"So in three or four years China's health system will be able to deal with all the health challenges in China," he said.

Also on Thursday, the experts from the WHO divided into three groups to visit three designated hospitals for the treatment of foreign SARS patients in Shanghai.

The hospitals were Shanghai Municipal Pneumonic Hospital, Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Xuhui District CDC.

After being briefed by the Municipal Pneumonic Hospital staff, the WHO experts tested nurses on how to confirm a high fever, how to accurately investigate the disease, how to distribute patients and how to take quarantine measures.

The WHO experts also discussed cases with the hospital experts, focusing on timely and effective treatment of the disease according to the clinical symptoms and diagnostic standards.

The six WHO experts arrived in Shanghai on Monday to evaluate the status of SARS prevention and treatment and will finish on Friday.

(Xinhua News Agency April 25, 2003)