WHO to make guidelines on emerging diseases
JAKARTA (JP): The World Health Organization (WHO) will issue guidelines dealing with emerging diseases of the 21st century, WHO representative to Indonesia Robert Kim-Farley said.
Kim-Farley told journalists Thursday the guidelines are being discussed at the organization's headquarters in Geneva and they will be announced by the end of the year.
The news conference, attended by Minister of Health Sujudi and Director General of Communicable Diseases Hadi Abednego, was also held in connection with the 49th anniversary of World Health Day on April 7.
Under the new guidelines, a network of regional existing health centers would respond to treating "new emerging" diseases including AIDS, Ebola and Hepatitis C which can strike anytime and anywhere, Kim-Farley said.
"The network system would work like the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, U.S. and it is more cost-effective than establishing a new center," Sujudi said.
Monitoring and reporting on the treatment of infectious diseases would be made on a regular basis to respond quickly to certain diseases, including the detection of AIDS cases and drug- resistant strains of tuberculosis, Kim-Farley said.
He added that WHO maintains surveillance data to monitor diseases that can be treated with vaccines including measles and polio.
Emerging diseases that have declined in the past two decades but have increased again would continue to be monitored and treated within the new networking system.
The emerging diseases include malaria, dengue fever, anthrax, cholera, meningitis and tuberculosis. Diseases which were once eradicated but begin to reappear are classified as "re-emerging".
Countries are required to report routinely, with Indonesia reporting on its drive to eradicate polio by the 21st century, he said.
He called for health workers to improve polio surveillance techniques to investigate acute flaccid paralysis, which children can develop for no apparent reason by closely monitoring laboratory testing.
He said that one in 100,000 among the world's population is afflicted annually with a paralysis that may or may not be polio- related.
In Indonesia, there is an estimated 700 cases of paralysis of which only one-tenth is reported to the organization.
Kim-Farley said the regional office located in New Delhi, India has developed a rapid response team to investigate and propose control measures for a particular disease in a country.
He said it is also supporting cross-border meetings such as between Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia to discuss infections affecting their borders.
He said that 17 million people die from infectious diseases each year, with 41 percent of them in Southeast Asia.
Of the infectious diseases, the WHO found smallpox to be eradicated worldwide since 1978, according to Sujudi. (01)