WHO warns vs return of killer pneumonia virus

World Health Organization (WHO) director general Lee Jong-Wook warned yesterday that the SARS virus could return and called for strengthened surveillance to contain the global threat.

"Will SARS come back or not? We have to prepare on the assumption that it will come back," Lee told the 54th session of the WHO regional committee for the Western Pacific in Manila, referring to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that ravaged the region this year.

"Our challenge now is to enhance surveillance networks that will detect and deal with SARS if it does return," he said.

The first human cases of the pneumonia-like virus were detected in southern China in November last year before the disease spread to more than 30 countries, infecting some 8,000 people and claiming 916 lives as of last month.

Experts have expressed worry that SARS is seasonal and could reappear in the coming months, as winter takes hold in the northern hemisphere.

Lee said that in the absence of a rapid diagnostic kit and cure for SARS there could be much confusion during the winter period if there was a deluge of cases of influenza or the common cold, which present similar symptoms to SARS.

"Clearly, this is one concern during this winter, when the common cold and flu comes back and then many people come up with fever and cough with mixed fears of SARS. There will be big confusion," he said.

He said a rapid and effective diagnostic method, which scientists were still working on, was "very important."

Lee said it would also take many years before a vaccine was developed to combat SARS. "So we are in an early stage of the problem," he added.

Shigeru Omi, the director of WHO Western Pacific region where more than 90 percent of the SARS cases were reported this year, called for a strengthening of the region’s health system to face new SARS threats.

Omi, a Japanese-trained doctor of molecular biology who led the WHO battle against SARS in Asia, returned unopposed to his post at the meeting yesterday.

Wang Longde, the vice health minister of China which was the biggest casualty of the SARS epidemic this year, did not rule out the possibility of the disease returning later this year to haunt the world’s most populous nation.

"But we already have some kind of preventive methods, just like many other countries have. Once it (resurfaces), we can deal with this and control it within a small area," he told AFP.

WHO’s Lee said results of a recent scientific mission to the southern Chinese province of Guangdong to establish the disease’s animal-human transmission link would be released soon. — AFP, Sheila Crisostomo