S Koreans censure govt for inadequate response to Mers

Seoul

SOUTH Korea's growing Mers outbreak has laid bare the country's poor handling of disasters despite President Park Geun Hye's pledge to overhaul public safety measures following last year's ferry disaster, specialists said.

Since the first case was diagnosed on May 20, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has spread at an alarmingly rapid pace in Asia's fourth largest economy, infecting 166 people and killing 24 of them in less than a month.

Specialists blame a combination of bureaucratic inefficiency and poor crisis management and training, creating mistrust and public anxiety and shaking public confidence in the very foundations of the country's "miracle" development model.

Almost all infections occurred in hospitals, and specialists from the World Health Organization (WHO) said that they saw no evidence of transmission of the virus in communities outside …