Southeast students, adviser to go to China despite SARS

It's something most American students only dream of -- sharing their ideas and beliefs with a region of the world once closed off to outsiders and experiencing another culture.

But for three Southeast Missouri State University students and their adviser, that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity takes place in China, a country now suffering an epidemic that has already claimed dozens of lives within its borders.

Despite the threat of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, the group still plans to join more than a dozen other Missouri university students on a three-week trip to mainland China in July.

The trip, mostly cultural exchange with Chinese university students, was to include a three-day stay in Hong Kong for the Baptist World Alliance Youth Conference, but the gathering was postponed until August 2004 due to concerns over SARS, said Bob Houchins, director of Southeast's Baptist Student Union. Hong Kong, hard hit by the disease, reported nine more SARS deaths on Tuesday.

And so Houchins, sophomore Dustin Nelson of Cape Girardeau and freshmen Jenn Catron of Bluford, Ill., and Jamie Russell of New Madrid, Mo., are going to stick to areas of China least affected by SARS.

'The intent is still there'

"It's created some rearrangement of our activities, but the intent is still there," Houchins said. "As long as they're not issuing any statements of 'no flights' by Americans into China, either by our government or China's, we intend to go."

Students from Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield and the University of Missouri-Columbia and their two advisers make up the rest of the group. The 19-member group recently met in Springfield to discuss concerns over the trip and to gauge everyone's interest in still going, Nelson said. The consensus was strong.

"We decided that if the planes won't take us over there, then we're not going," he said.

A trade association representing 17 major airlines in the Asia-Pacific region urged governments not to impose travel bans to fight SARS, saying it has given the region's carriers their worst crisis ever.

When SARS started appearing in the mainstream news headlines, Nelson said, some assumed he would call off his trip.

"I really asked God to open their eyes," he said. "It's been disheartening, yes, because it's been people I've trusted and who I thought would know me better."

At least 154 SARS victims have died around the world, out of more than 3,200 cases, most of them in Asia.

Canada has reported 13 deaths, mainland China 64 and Singapore 12. Vietnam has had five deaths, Thailand two and Malaysia one. There have been 193 suspected cases in the United States but no known deaths.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.