The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) director general, Lee Jong-Wook, warned in Manila on Monday that the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) virus could return and called for strengthened surveillance to contain the global threat.
”Will Sars come back or not? We have to prepare on the assumption that it will come back,” Lee told the 54th session of the WHO regional committee for the Western Pacific, referring to the virus that ravaged the region earlier this year.
”Our challenge now is to enhance surveillance networks that will detect and deal with Sars if it does return.”
The first human cases of the pneumonia-like virus were detected in southern China in November last year before spreading to more than 30 countries, infecting about 8 000 people and claiming 916 lives by August.
Experts have expressed worry that Sars was seasonal and could reappear in the coming months, as winter takes hold in the northern hemisphere.
Lee said that in the absence of a rapid diagnostic kit and cure for Sars, there could be much confusion during the winter period if there was a deluge of cases of influenza or the common cold, which represent similar symptoms as Sars.
”Clearly, this is one concern during this winter, when the common cold and flu comes back and then many people come up with fever and cough with mixed fears of Sars. There will be big confusion.”
He said a rapid and effective diagnostic method, which scientists were still working on to pinpoint Sars cases, was ”very
important”.
Lee said it would also take many years before a vaccine was developed to combat Sars.
”So we are in an early stage of the problem.”
He said Sars had ”tested to the full” the Western Pacific, a region made up of 37 countries and territories where more than 90% of the Sars cases were reported earlier this year.
”This was the area hardest hit by the world’s newest disease. We had to work to understand what was causing it,” while at the same time waging a battle ”to treat those most directly affected”.
Wang Longde, the Deputy Health Minister of China, which was the biggest casualty of the Sars epidemic this year, did not rule out the possibility of the disease returning later this year to haunt the world’s most populous nation.
”But we already have some kind of preventive methods, just like many other countries have. Once it [resurfaces], we can deal with this and control it within a small area,” he said.
WHO’s Lee also said that results of a recent scientific mission to the southern Chinese province of Guangdong to establish the disease’s animal-human transmission link would be released ”soon”.
The mission comprised officials from WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organisation as well as scientists from China and Hong Kong, he said.
Lee did not comment on newly published research that added weight to the theory that a Sars-like virus jumped from animals to humans in Guangdong.
Scientists in Hong Kong and in the province compared samples from Sars patients with a Sars-like coronavirus taken from animals eaten as delicacies, including rodent-like palm civets, in a live animal market in Shenzhen.
They concluded that the animals had a coronavirus that was 99,8% identical to the virus that causes Sars, according to last week’s edition of the Science journal.
The WHO’s Western-Pacific member governments have signalled that they want the United Nations body to allocate more funds to the region as it grapples with a possible resurgence of Sars and threats from other new infectious diseases.
A resolution calling for a revamp of the WHO’s system of allocating funds to regions is expected to be adopted at the five-day meeting at the WHO regional headquarters. — Sapa-AFP