TORONTO - New international health rules that require countries to report disease outbreaks that could pose a global health threat will lead to greater openness and enhance public health security, a senior official of the World Health Organization said Sunday.
Dr. David Heymann said the International Health Regulations, which came into force on June 15, will change the way infectious diseases are managed on a global level.
"We've been able to change the norm. Countries understand now that you can't hide infectious diseases and that it's honourable to report, even if it costs you money," said Heymann, assistant director general for communicable diseases and the Geneva-based agency's pandemic preparedness czar.
Heymann was in Toronto for the opening of a major international conference on influenza known as Options for the Control of Influenza.
The rules, referred to in the shorthand of the public health community as the IHR, were endorsed by the 193 member countries of the WHO. They are an expansion of an earlier set of disease reporting rules that only required countries to report outbreaks of three diseases - yellow fever, cholera and plague.
Epidemics of Ebola virus and the 2003 SARS outbreak spurred a rewriting of the rules to extend them more broadly to known and future disease threats.
Dr. David Butler-Jones, Canada's chief public health officer, said the regulations reflect the fact that the global community believes disease threats must be addressed in a co-ordinated and open way.
"It's the realization that we need to as countries work together to address these things," he said in an interview following the opening session of the week-long conference.
Butler-Jones said experiences like SARS have driven home for countries the importance of addressing disease outbreaks in a rapid way at the source, so that they don't slip across into other states.
"So the IHRs in place help to reinforce that, but I think there's real interest and collaboration around the world that is so much better than it was even five years ago," he said.
Butler-Jones noted the recent case of an American man infected with a dangerous form of tuberculosis who travelled to Europe and back to North America through Canada was "a stark reminder of our collective vulnerability to infectious diseases."
Heymann acknowledged that the new international disease reporting mechanism does not come equipped with enforcement powers.
"We are not a policing agency," he said of the WHO.
"All we can do is change what's the norm and the standard. In other words, the norm is now to report. And there are enough checks and balances in our global safety net of surveillance and response to make sure that if countries don't report, it's known. So it's in countries' interest to report for many different reasons."
