WHO calls for new tools to keep up with new diseases like SARS

With most of the powers at its disposal increasingly outdated, the United Nations health agency is calling for more potent tools to keep up with emerging diseases such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and bird flu, which have recently spread havoc in Asia and beyond and left the world at risk for pandemics.

“The International Health Regulations (IHR) comprise the only internationally binding legislation on the reporting of epidemic diseases but the need for updated regulations has been recognized for many years,” Shigeru Omi, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Director for the Western Pacific, said yesterday.

Addressing a meeting at regional headquarters in Manila, Philippines, on proposed amendments to the IHR, he stressed the need to empower WHO to face the health challenges of the 21st century, noting that present regulations are more than 30 years old.

“These regulations relate to an era when infectious disease were on the decline,” he added. Since then, the level of risk has risen significantly, driven by the “trinity” of organism, host and environmental factors, with SARS and bird flu the most recent results of this process.

Just this month China announced a new outbreak of SARS, with nine confirmed or suspected cases so far of the disease which last year killed 774 people and infected more than 8,000 worldwide, the vast majority of them in China.

“Microbes evolve, and this process is being accelerated by human activity,” Dr. Omi said. “Human and animal populations provide many appealing ecological niches. And environmental degradation and change are accelerating the potential for epidemic diseases’ spread.”

A draft of the new regulations will be discussed in November at an intergovernmental working group in Switzerland and a final draft will be presented to the World Health Assembly, the WHO’s governing body, next year.