Growing health threats demand global response: WHO

GENEVA (AFP) - Infectious diseases are emerging faster than at any time in history, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned in a report on Thursday that urged closer global cooperation to tackle the growing health threats of the 21st century.

The WHO underlined that the threats knew no boundaries and included not only epidemics, but also foodborne diseases, chemical, biological or nuclear accidents or attacks, industrial pollution and the impact of climate change "that may put millions of people at risk in several countries".

"The report emphasises that the international response required today is not only to the known, but also to the unknown," the WHO said in its 2007 World Health Report "A Safer Future".

Open sharing of medical know-how, technology and supplies between rich and poor countries is also crucial, and "one of the most feasible routes to global health security," it added.

Since the 1970s new diseases have been identified at the "unprecedented" rate of one or more per year, the report said.

Other centuries-old threats such as influenza, malaria and tuberculosis were also thriving due to a combination of biological mutations, rising resistance to antibiotics and weak health systems.

"Given today's universal vulnerability to these threats, better security calls for global solidarity," WHO Director General Margaret Chan said in a statement, calling it "a collective aspiration and a mutual responsibility."

The report is largely based on the notion that a given health threat is no longer easily confined within a country and can spread around the world swiftly, partly due to the expansion in passenger air travel over the past half century and to trade.

It warned of "serious gaps, particularly in health services in many countries," caused by poverty or a lack of investment, that severely weaken the global safety net.

Health and medical care are not only essential to help prevent or treat illness, they are also at the core of detecting outbreaks, new diseases, as well as bioweapon attacks, environmental health problems, in time, the report underlined.

"It would be extremely naive and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like AIDS, another Ebola, another SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), sooner or later."

The three historical advances that helped stifle diseases such as bubonic plague, cholera and smallpox -- quarantines, better sanitation and immunisation -- came about separately but became successes once they were applied internationally, the report argued.

The WHO introduced new International Health Regulations this year that are meant to sharpen the response of its 193 members to major health threats within their own borders or abroad.

It is also trying to resolve with Indonesian complaints about the availability of newly developed medicines in poor countries, which halted crucial bird flu virus sharing with foreign laboratories.

The sharing of tissue samples from human victims is needed to detect possible mutations in the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus -- one of the biggest fears of the beginning of this century -- that might lead to a flu pandemic.