Infectious disease specialists meeting at World Health Organization's Western Pacific Regional Office held in Manila, capital of the Philippines, on Friday proposed to take specific steps to ensure a faster and more comprehensive response to the emerging infectious diseases, including avian influenza.

Their recommendations emerged during a three-day meeting of WHO 's nine-person Technical Advisory Group on emerging diseases.

"Our starting point was the Asia Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases," said Dr Takeshi Kasai, WHO's Regional Adviser in Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response, referring to a joint approach the WHO's Western Pacific and South-East Asia Regional Offices developed to strengthen the response to emerging infectious diseases.

"This week we focused on a work plan that will allow us to help countries in the Region build the capacity they need to detect and quickly respond to the emerging diseases, including avian and pandemic influenza," Kasai said.

The Asia Pacific Strategy on the Emerging Diseases and the work plan hammered out this week were developed, in part, to meet the requirements of the recently revised International Health Regulations.

Known as IHR (2005), the regulations call on all WHO members to improve surveillance and to rapidly report and respond to any outbreak of infectious disease or other public health emergency of international concern.

The Technical Advisory Group recommended aspects of the work plan related to avian influenza be implemented on a priority basis throughout Asia and the Pacific. The advisory group members also urged each country to quickly develop national plans to rapidly implement the emerging diseases strategy and to ensure that they are meeting the core capacity requirements of IHR (2005).

The experts also called on national leaders to make the political and financial commitments to ensure that these disease- control strategies are implemented and sustained.

Since December 2003, highly pathogenic A(H5N1) avian influenza viruses have swept through poultry populations across Asia and parts of Europe. The outbreaks are historically unprecedented in scale and geographical spread. Their economic impact on the agricultural sector of the affected countries has been severe.

Source: Xinhua