The World Health Organization (WHO) believes the international community has a fighting chance to eliminate severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) forever as a global threat, a WHO official said in Beijing Tuesday.

"The WHO does not seek to just control or contain SARS, or even just find a cure for it. We want to remove it completely as a threat to humans," said Henk Bekedam, WHO Representative in China, in a speech at the two-day ASEAN, China, Japan and ROK (10+3) High-level Symposium on SARS.

"We have, at this early stage of the disease, the best opportunity we will ever have to achieve the goal of elimination," he said.

Bekedam said SARS poses a major health challenge to the entire world, a challenge that Asia was the first to confront.

"Although we are still in the early stage of fighting the disease, it is not too soon to begin to look ahead," he said.

Due to the effective measures put in place by the international community, the number of SARS cases globally is declining, and many of the outbreaks seem to have passed their peaks, Bekedam said.

But he emphasized that the international community need to remain vigilant and committed to preventing the transmission of SARS.

"In the past few days we have seen in Canada how one misdiagnosis or case misclassification, combined with lowered vigilance, can lead to a new SARS outbreak," he said.

The only guarantee for the continuation of the current improvement trend is to remain alert and maintain the high level of control that has been put in place, said Bekedam.

He said SARS has brought the international community into a period of global cooperation to meet the health challenges of the 21st century.

"Our goal is not only to beat SARS, but to bring about an era of global health cooperation that can prepare us for the coming challenges of the next century," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency June 4, 2003)