Kansas City, Mo. ? A mysterious disease and warnings against traveling to Asia are not deterring some would-be parents from traveling to China to pick up their new adoptive children.

Jeannie and Stuart Whitenack of Lenexa will be leaving soon to meet their first child, 8-month-old Olivia, and bring her home to Kansas.

They will take masks and antibacterial soap, as recommended by their adoption agency, Children’s Hope International, and will confine themselves to their hotels as much as possible.

“When you wait this long to become a parent, nothing is going to stand in our way,” Jeannie Whitenack said.

They will be going into Guangzhou, a hotbed for a new disease called SARS — severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Other families also continue to leave for China to adopt children despite the possible dangers, an adoption agency official said.

“If your child was in China waiting for you, wouldn’t you go?” asked Terry Hayter, director of the Children’s Hope office in Kansas City. “I don’t think we can hold our parents back.”

SARS began grabbing international attention just a few weeks ago. It causes flulike symptoms, sometimes quite severe, and has claimed more than 80 lives.

The World Health Organization recommends that people delay all but essential travel to Hong Kong and Guangdong province in China. Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Canada also have recorded deaths from the illness.

There have been two suspected cases in Missouri, one each in the Springfield and St. Louis areas.

In Kansas there is one suspected case, a Wichita man who went to China in late February with his wife to adopt their new baby girl, ZoraLin.

Mark and Christie VanCamp returned in March with their child just as fears about SARS began in China and Guangzhou, where they had been.

When they got home, VanCamp was not feeling well, and started getting worse.

“I felt like I had a cinder block resting on my chest,” he said. “I had to sleep sitting up.”

In mid-March, Christie VanCamp, a nurse, consulted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site, read the symptoms of SARS and concluded that her husband had many of them.

VanCamp was hospitalized for several days and had a fever of 101.5 degrees. Tests were conducted, health department officials were consulted, and VanCamp started worrying that his wife and children might catch the disease.

Earlier this week, VanCamp felt better, but then started feeling poorly again as the week went on. He returned to the doctor Friday for more tests.

VanCamp, who said he didn’t mind talking about the illness, went on the “Good Morning America” show to discuss what he was going through.

He said he was frustrated because he didn’t know whether he had SARS, or how long it would take for him to recover.

State health officials say they may never know whether he has the disease.

“They’re not even 100 percent sure what they’re looking for,” VanCamp said. “This isn’t exactly how I wanted to get my 15 minutes of fame.”