Hanoi, Oct 20: Sars may have been contained for the moment but the international community must take immediate steps to prepare for a recurrence or the outbreak of a new disease, the World Health Organisation said today. "We cannot rest on our success so far. Sars may return and we should be ready for it," said Dr Shigeru Omi, the WHO's Regional Director for the Western Pacific.
His comments, read out on his behalf by Pascale Brudon, the UN agency's representative to Vietnam, came on the opening day of a two-day conference in Hanoi analysing the strategies used to contain the recent Sars crisis.
Omi warned, however, that global health threats went beyond Sars.
"We cannot know when and where the next global or regional threat will arise, be it naturally occurring or as a result of our own rapid but chaotic development or because of the dangerous times in which we find ourselves today."
The world "must be ready for anything" regardless of the financial costs, and issues such as local detection and treatment capacities, national policies and international agreements and conventions need to be addressed, he added.
Bureau Report