Countries should implement international health regulations that seek to control infectious diseases at their source rather than at national borders, and expand their cooperation on surveillance, knowledge, system building, and training, the World Health Organization said.
In its 2007 World Health Report, titled “A Safer Future: Global Public Health Security in the 21st Century,” WHO said international travel and communications mean that countries cannot suppress information about infectious disease or prevent its spread beyond their borders. This fact makes it imperative that countries embrace the revision to international health regulations published in 2005.
Since 1967, at least 39 new infectious diseases have emerged, including HIV and severe acute respiratory syndrome, while older pathogens such as influenza and tuberculosis have reemerged as threats because of health system complacency or misuse of antimicrobials. With easier international travel and communications, the threat of pathogens to international security is as great as ever, the report says.
“Given today's universal vulnerability to these threats, better security calls for global solidarity,” Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said in a written statement. “International public health security is both a collective aspiration and a mutual responsibility. The new watchwords are diplomacy, cooperation, transparency, and preparedness.”
The 2005 international health regulations enable public health officials to seek to control infectious disease outbreaks at their source, rather than focusing on border control at airports and seaports to avert importation of disease, and allows them to rely on information other than government sources to identify and monitor such disease outbreaks.
By seeking transparency from member governments, the goal is to reduce the toll both in human sickness and death, as well as the economic impact that rumors can have on a country believed to have a disease outbreak.
“Instant electronic communication means that disease outbreaks can no longer be kept secret, as was often the case during the implementation of the previous international health regulations. Governments were unwilling to report outbreaks because of the potential damage to their economies through disruptions in trade, travel, and tourism,” the report says.
Gaps occur in international public health security because of inadequate investment in public health defenses; unexpected policy changes; conflicts that force people to flee to overcrowded, unhygienic, and impoverished conditions; microbial evolution; and agricultural practices, the report states.
The report also focuses on the public health effects of environmental events, foodborne diseases, and accidental or deliberate chemical, radioactive, or biologic accidents, many of which now fall under the definition of events requiring an international public health response.