IT’S THE JOKE that now prevails at Matignon, “Why not we would send a double of Jean-Pierre Raffarin in China? Tomorrow afternoon, is of course the real Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Poitou-Charente, who will fly to Beijing.
He will be accompanied by a delegation of 120 people. Which include: three Secretaries of State (Dominique Bussereau, Frans Loos and Renaud Muselier), four members (including the member for Seine-et-Marne Guy Drut), five businessmen and a score of journalists. No way to cancel this visit! And no matter if the figures of the epidemic of atypical pneumonia are becoming daily more alarming. The Prime Minister has decided to demonstrate his courage. That is, in any case, the message we want to get around him.
Two rooms reserved at a Beijing hospital after he left the French advised not to travel to China and countries in Southeast Asia, the prime minister prepares to rather a bad example, although a luxury precautions surrounding the journey of thirty hours in Beijing. Mobilized for several weeks, the Prime Minister, his doctor, the best public health specialists and to Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei (himself a professor of medicine), have developed an impressive list of instructions for this trip. The Prime Minister and all members of the delegation take you in their luggage, a sort of “survival kit” disinfectant wipes, gels and hydroalcoholic masks to prevent the risk of SARS. “Jean-Pierre Raffarin should not raise himself,” said the doctor, however, the Prime Minister. Matignon has also provided, together with the embassy doctor in France, book two rooms at a hospital in Beijing to conduct necessary examinations emergency.
Finally, Chinese authorities have pledged to order the disinfection deeper than usual. Everything should be cleaned, washed and bricked Raffarin will travel anywhere. In reality, the French prime minister will only see little of China. His trip is limited to a seminar with the new leaders of communist countries, including Prime Minister Hu Jintao. His only visit will be held outdoors on Saturday morning at the site of the Peking Opera.
Then he return to Paris. Safe quarantine because, if symptoms of pneumonia were to appear, it would intervene after his return to France. As all members of the delegation, the head of government will however remain vigilant during the period of incubation, that is to say, two to ten days. In France, twelve people are under medical supervision, as part of the surveillance of SARS. The number of cases reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), was established yesterday at five, one was hospitalized in Tourcoing.