New regulations aimed at making it easier for countries to share information about disease outbreaks will help fight avian influenza, a senior World Health Organisation official said on Monday.
The new regulations, along with the experience in controlling Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), should ease the way for co-operation should there be an influenza pandemic, said Dr David Heymann, executive director for communicable diseases at WHO.
"Sars showed us that countries are willing to give up just a little bit of their sovereignty for the good of the world," Heymann said in an interview. Sars swept out of southern China in 2002 and by the time it was contained in mid-2003 it had infected close to 8,000 people and killed 800.
It was caused by a virus in the coronavirus family that had never been seen before. Unprecedented public health measures helped control it before it spread widely, although it got as far as Canada via jet.
H5N1 bird flu is considered much more dangerous. It is entrenched in flocks across much of Asia and as far west as Ukraine and Romania. It is not yet easily passed to people but WHO has reported 137 cases and 70 deaths in five Asian countries. WHO is urging affected countries to report H5N1 outbreaks right away and to get help in controlling them.
New rules, called the International Health Regulations and adopted by the World Health Assembly in May, build on lessons learned from Sars, Heymann said before describing the new rules to a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
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