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(Hong Kong-AP) -- A lawmaker in Hong Kong has criticized the government for allowing the transfer of an American SARS patient who had been treated across the border in mainland China but was dead on arrival at Hong Kong hospital.
Lawmaker Albert Ho said the man -- 52-year-old James Salisbury of Orem, Utah, -- was not a Hong Kong resident and was not a Chinese citizen.
He said accepting was unfair to Hong Kong health workers.
Hong Kong Health Department spokesman Tang Kwok-keung said foreign patients would be allowed only in rare circumstances, but he declined to discuss the case of Salisbury.
Salisbury's family said it had made the request for him to be moved.
Ho said it was unfair to bring another SARS patient into Hong Kong, where stressed hospital workers are working overtime to handle a flood of SARS cases. Hong Kong has had more than one-thousand, 100 people sickened by SARS and at least 40 have died.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
