Development & Aid, Headlines, Health, North America

HEALTH: Canada Signals Success Against WHO Toronto Travel Warning

Mark Bourrie

OTTAWA, Apr 25 2003 (IPS) - Furious lobbying by Canadian politicians against a World Health Organization (WHO) advisory to avoid the City of Toronto because of the SARS outbreak appeared to pay off Friday when Ontario Premier Ernie Eves said the global body would review its decision.

Earlier, Prime Minister Jean Chretien had promised to keep pressure on WHO chief Gro Harlem Brundtland to revoke the advisory issued because of the outbreak in Canada’s largest city of the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

Political leaders here have lambasted the WHO for including Toronto on a list of regions that have lost control of the virus. Hong Kong, Beijing, China’s Shanxi province and Guangdong province – believed to be the source of the outbreak – are also listed.

It was feared the decision would further devastate the economy of greater Toronto, which acts as the country’s economic engine.

Wednesday’s travel advisory, along with warnings to British citizens by their government and other negative publicity, is expected to cost Toronto billions of dollars in lost tourism revenue. Already, conventions that were to bring more than 60,000 visitors to the city this spring and summer have been cancelled.

Hotel bookings have dropped drastically, and local officials say the hospitality sector had already lost about 30 per cent of its business before the WHO advisory was issued.

Amateur sports teams travelling to the United States have been turned back at the border and Major League Baseball has warned players visiting Toronto to play against the Toronto Blue Jays not to sign autographs, mingle with fans or visit hospitals.

But Eves, leader of the central Canadian province that includes Toronto, said Friday, "I’m pleased to announce they are going to present the updated facts to the (WHO) director next Tuesday morning and Tuesday there will be a decision to make whether to lift the travel ban on Toronto or not”.

WHO did not confirm the review.

Chretien has already called Brundtland, and said Friday he would speak to her again next week. His cabinet, which normally meets in Ottawa, will hold a rare out-of-town meeting in Toronto on Tuesday, and Chretien says his wife Aline will keep a promise to visit the city next Thursday.

Canadian doctors say no new cases of SARS have been diagnosed in Toronto in the past 19 days. But two more victims died Friday, bringing the total dead in the country to 19.

A WHO official denied Friday that politics had anything to do with the warning.

"We do not like making travel advisory recommendations," said David Heymann, speaking by telephone from WHO headquarters in Geneva to Canadian reporters. ”We’re trying to stop the spread of this disease internationally, and if we see a chance to eliminate it, to drive it back into the box à we do that."

Heymann noted that the WHO issued the advisory after at least one incident in which SARS was carried to a developing country from Toronto – a nurse carried the virus from a Toronto hospital to the Philippines. As well, is has spread from Toronto to the United States and Australia, says the WHO.

Heymann warned that the disease, if it spreads into the general population of an undeveloped country, could have devastating results. Some SARS-stricken countries have a death rate of more than 10 per cent, depending on the quality of their health care system and the age of victims.

Toronto had 257 suspected or probable SARS cases on Thursday, down 10 from the day before. Chretien’s call to Brundtland came a day after the WHO chief told Health Minister Anne McLellan the travel warning will stay until Canada proves it has the disease under control.

Canadian medical officials have also been lobbying their counterparts at the WHO to lift the ban. Donald Low, a Toronto microbiologist who leads the Canadian SARS effort, discussed the advisory Thursday with WHO executives. He says the global body issued the notice without discussing the SARS outbreak with officials in the Canadian or Toronto governments.

The decision was not scientifically sound, he added. "I think we’re the scapegoat."

”Our impression is they are not thinking seriously about lifting their advisory," Health Canada spokesman Paul Gully told a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday. He said the incidents of SARS being exported ”happened long enough ago to be irrelevant”.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says it will not issue a similar advisory. "We understand the patterns of transmission in Toronto," said spokeswoman Julie Gerberding in Atlanta. "They make sense, the epidemiological picture is complete, and there’s no suggestion that a traveller going to Toronto is inadvertently coming into contact with a SARS patient."

But the damage may already have been done. Two huge conventions, of cancer researchers and librarians, which were to draw some 50,000 visitors to Toronto, have already been cancelled. Residents of Canada’s largest city are being denied tickets on cruise ship lines, and Belize has banned visitors from this country.

At Toronto City Hall, Councillor Brad Duguid reacted harshly to rumours that the city’s garbage shipments to Michigan were to be slowed by a law forcing both drivers and trucks to be inspected for possible SARS contamination.

"That would be in very poor taste, and any politician who would do that is not worth anything," he said.