Experts marking World Health Day in Singapore on Monday called for greater cooperation and worldwide collaboration in the face of international threats to health security.
”All nations are at risk,” said Dr Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), during a panel debate.
Chan, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store stressed that far more needs to be done.
”To deal effectively with future global health threats, which are yet unknown but possibly catastrophic, we must share information, combine our efforts, and pool our resources,” Lee said.
”Health is everybody’s business,” said Store, stressing that globalisation has increased countries’ vulnerability and interdependence.
The debate also focused on threats to collective health security from environment change, bio-terrorism, humanitarian emergencies caused by natural disasters and the impact of Aids, the disease which is threatening the stability of communities in some of the poorest countries in the world.
”Traditional defences at national borders are no protection against a microbe incubating in an unsuspecting traveller or an insect vector hiding in a cargo hold,” Chan said.
”This universal vulnerability creates a need for collective defences and for shared responsibility in making these defences work,” she stressed.
Chan cited as progress WHO’s revised international health regulations, which will come into force on June 15 for its members.
The regulations will strengthen national and collective defences against the spread of diseases while avoiding unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade.
”Outbreaks are a much larger menace than they were just three decades ago,” Chan said, adding that the unique conditions of the 21st century have amplified their invasive and disruptive power.
More and faster travel combined with closely interdependent economies can result ”in much greater shocks”, she said.
WHO launched a coordinating centre earlier on Monday, selecting the city-state’s Health Promotion Board for the task of ”fostering collaborations and strengthening information sharing … in health promotion and disease prevention with WHO member countries”.
Among the functions are developing and offering training programmes in workplaces and promoting the well-being of children, youths, adults and the elderly.
More than 200 guests, including health ministers from countries belonging to the Association of South-East Asian Nations as well as senior government officials and private sector leaders, attended the events.
On the positive side, Chan said the world’s electronic transparency has made it difficult for any country to hide an outbreak.
”News will always seep out and be picked up,” she said. Media reports were the first alert to more than 52% of the 197 outbreaks verified by WHO last year. — Sapa-dpa