Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Headlines, Health, North America

HEALTH: Canada, U.S. to Team Up Against SARS and Other New Viruses

Mark Bourrie

OTTAWA, May 13 2003 (IPS) - A new North American agency will provide shock troops for the fight against new viruses like SARS and West Nile, health officials say.

Paul Gully, head of the Canadian health department’s contagious disease department, says the Canada-U.S. agency will be uniquely able to provide "surge capacity" – a large pool of experts trained in handling epidemics who can be quickly mobilised when a crisis like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) erupts.

"What we (want) is a (virus identification and treatment) capacity that we can immediately, easily divert," Gully says.

During April’s SARS outbreak in Toronto, Canadian health workers and epidemiologists found they could not keep up with the disease. One of the city’s top experts on viral infections caught SARS and was hospitalised for a month, and federal officials had to ask for help from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

At the same time, Canadian officials were outraged when the World Health Organization issued a travel advisory for the city. It was lifted five days later, but the tourism industry in the country’s largest city suffered a 40 percent loss and has shown few signs of rebounding prior to the usually peak summer season.

Health officials are discussing the idea of setting up an organisation similar to the Atlanta-based CDC, confirmed James Young, commissioner of public safety in Ontario province, which includes Toronto.

"I think you’ll see permanent changes as a result of SARS because we all realise this is not likely the last (epidemic) we face," he said. In fact, West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne disease that spread through Canada’s southern neighbour the United States in the 1990s, reached parts of this country last summer and is spread to most provinces this year.

The disease, with a five percent mortality rate, causes flu-like symptoms and, in some cases, encephalitis.

CDC Director Julie Gerberding said she has picked up valuable tips from Toronto’s SARS experience that could be used if the United States faces a similar outbreak. The best way to combat the disease is to continue international co-operation, Gerberding told a recent gathering of infectious disease experts in Toronto to discuss the SARS epidemic.

"Along the lines of integration, I’m very pleased to say we have looked at the concept of a strategic national plan for SARS put forward by the Canadian health officials and we think the concept is excellent,” Gerberding added.

"We’d very much like to join in and to share the development of a cohesive strategy for our countries since we have very important issues in common."

The decision on how Canada will work with other jurisdictions to fight new diseases will be made by a federal advisory panel of experts appointed by national health minister, Anne McLellan. Her department faced heavy criticism for being slow to help Toronto cope with the SARS outbreak.

Outbreaks like SARS offer the United States a chance to bolster its reputation and increase its security by strengthening public health in poor countries, said Barry Bloom, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

"With the same intensity we gave to Saddam Hussein, we could be waging war against global infectious disease by training experts in disease surveillance, strengthening laboratories around the world and linking them to the best labs in the United States, and by supporting the WHO (World Health Organization) which is an agency of the United Nations," Bloom wrote in a column in the New York newspaper ‘Newsday’.

Public health, an area long overlooked in North America and Europe, is almost non-existent in many impoverished parts of sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions, Bloom believes.

Embracing the United Nations and its agencies could also help dispel global anti-Americanism, he added.

"And in a world distrustful of our values in the United States, investing in global health could help to change our image from one of self-interest to human interest," Bloom wrote.

Last week, the Conference Board of Canada, a national economic forecaster, estimated the outbreak of SARS will cost Toronto one billion dollars (720 million U.S. dollars).

More than one-half of the economic damage will hit travel and tourism, with the rest of the economic pain concentrated in the retail sector, according to the report.

It also projects a national economic loss of 1.5 billion dollars, 0.15 percent of Canada’s gross domestic product.