Killer diseases top WHO agenda
Public health officials from more than 20 countries gathered today to discuss ways to prevent a possible deadly outbreak of bird flu in humans and contain an epidemic of Japanese encephalitis that has killed nearly 1,000 people in South Asia.
The Western Pacific Regional meeting of the World Health Organisation started today in Noumea, the capital of France’s archipelago nation of New Caledonia, and runs until Friday.
Participants will focus on a strategy for containing emerging diseases in the Asia Pacific region, including human infections from bird flu, Japanese encephalitis, AIDS and tuberculosis.
Health ministers and policy makers are to endorse a set of guidelines “strengthen national and regional capacity for early detection, rapid response, and preparedness for emerging diseases”, WHO said.
They also require WHO member countries to mobilise ”adequate and sustainable financial resources to implement the strategy,” and ask wealthy nations to provide financial or logistical help to poorer countries where disease outbreaks are likely to occur.
Last week, Indonesia last week confirmed its fourth human death from the bird flu virus, bringing the total number deaths in Asia to 63.
Most cases have been traced to contact with poultry, but health experts have warned the virus could mutate into a form that is highly contagious among humans.
Last month, pharmaceutical company Roche Holdings AG donated three million treatment courses of an anti-viral drug that has been proven to treat human cases of bird flu to a reserve stock managed by WHO.
WHO has said it will use the reserve stocks of the drug – oseltamivir, known commercially as Tamiflu – to respond quickly to any emerging influenza pandemic if stocks held by individual countries are not enough.
Wealthy countries have already begun stockpiling the drug, but WHO has expressed concern that many poorer Asian countries have inadequate supplies of the drug.
The WHO meeting will also focus on an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis that has killed nearly 1,000 people in South Asia. The mosquito-borne disease kills a number of people, mostly children, each year during the monsoon rains in the South Asian region, but this season’s toll is the highest in many years.
India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, has been hardest hit by the outbreak. The disease is preventable with vaccinations, but the provincial government has said it does not have enough money to vaccinate its children.
