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)