APEC ministers adopt SARS plan

Asia-Pacific health ministers agreed yesterday to common health screening procedures for the deadly SARS virus and to share more information to combat the disease as China promised openness to stop future outbreaks.

Ministers and officials of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, meeting in Thailand, also pledged to keep their markets open and resist using anti-SARS measures as protectionist trade barriers.

In a final statement, the APEC ministers adopted an action plan to standardise health screening and increase information flows about SARS and other diseases across the grouping, which covers economies ranging from the United States to the tiny, oil-rich sultanate of Brunei.

The measures include departure and arrival temperature and medical checks on air passengers from areas designated by the UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) as SARS-affected. Suspect passengers would be quarantined.

They also urged priority customs clearance for medical equipment and supplies and said they would not let SARS control measures become a barrier to travel.

"As there is no evidence that goods and products from economies with local transmission of SARS pose a risk to public health, disinfecting and barring such goods is unnecessary," the statement said.

SARS, believed to have jumped from animals to humans in China late last year, has killed more than 800 people worldwide, infected about 8,500, trimmed economic growth forecasts and cost billions of dollars in lost business.

Opening the meeting yesterday, China's vice-premier and health minister, Wu Yi, said Chinese society had become more open as a result of having to deal with the virus. She said SARS was top of the Chinese government's agenda and pledged international openness and co-operation in future.

"When the epidemic first struck, we were unaware of its gravity. Moreover, our public health system was weak and flawed and there was neither unified chain of command nor smooth flow of information," Wu Yi told the ministers. "Having overcome the SARS epidemic... Chinese society is more mature and open," she said.

China was accused of covering up the extent of the outbreak for months after it first appeared in the southern province of Guangdong late last year. Its secrecy over the illness earned the government international condemnation.

The ministerial statement also repeated Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's call earlier in the day for more scientific co-operation to battle SARS and diseases like it. He said it was likely SARS would never disappear.

"We cannot and must not drop our guard," Thaksin said in a speech to the ministers. "There is no telling when it will re-emerge and how much more damage it will do next time round. What's more, it is possible that the next outbreak will be of another disease just as unknown and as serious," he said.

As long as we do not know enough about SARS, fear and uncertainty will be the driving forces in business decisions."

The WHO says humans will probably be free from the virus within two to three weeks but fears a fresh outbreak could emerge in China next winter. Hong Kong and China, the places worst affected by SARS, were given the all-clear by the WHO this month. Taiwan and Toronto, Canada, are expected to follow soon.

"There needs to be now intensive work in China because this is where the disease emerged in the past, and if indeed it has gone from the human population, it's where it will emerge in the future," David Heymann, WHO communicable disease unit director, told Reuters on Friday. "Everything relies on China."