KARACHI, Nov 6: Worldwide partnerships are required between countries, nongovernmental organizations, international organizations, medical institutions and individuals in order to respond to the threat of epidemic and infectious diseases, to ensure global health security.

Dr Hussain A. Gezairy, an WHO regional director, said while inaugurating an inter-country meeting on surveillance, prevention and control of epidemic diseases that recently concluded in Cairo.

A WHO press release issued here on Wednesday said the meeting was widely attended by participants from all the 23 countries of the region including Pakistan, besides senior WHO officers from the headquarters and regional offices.

The Pakistani team included Dr Athar Saeed Dil, executive director National Institute of Health, Dr Birjees H. Kazi, chief public health NIH. The WHO Pakistan was represented by Dr Ghulam Nabi Kazi.

Dr Gazany noted that the meeting had come at a time when there was an increased awareness, both public and professional, of the increasing burden of emerging and epidemic diseases.

He praised the collaborative efforts and positive response of UN agencies, nongovernmental organizations, bilateral and multilateral cooperation central in the control of epidemic diarrhoea /cholera outbreaks in Afghanistan and Somalia, along with Meningococcal Meningitis epidemics in Somalia and Southern Sudan this year.

He warned that the burden of emerging and epidemic diseases in the Eastern Mediterranean Region could be high as evidenced by massive Meningococcal Meningitis epidemics in Sudan, cholera outbreaks in Afghanistan, Djibouti, Iraq and Somalia, epidemic Gastroenteritis in Pakistan and Sudan, outbreaks of Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic fever in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, Dengue fever in several countries in the Arabian Peninsula, and Ebola haemorrhagic fever in the sub-Saharan Africa.

He further noted that the Rift Valley fever, which was confined to the sub-Saharan Africa , had spread to constitute a continuous threat to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, while a high level of endemicity of hepatitis C was observed in several countries and outbreaks of hepatitis E were reported from several countries.

HIV/AIDS was also said to have started its full-blown epidemic phase in some countries and the situation was not well-defined in others.

Dr Gezairy stressed that the success in dealing with such epidemics depended largely on the state of preparedness in advance of any action.

Epidemic preparedness, he said, entailed WHO as an emergency health service, as well as an integral part of communicable disease prevention and control programmes.

He stressed the need for sound planning and called for intensification of efforts to adopt an integrated approach which would maximize the use of scarce resources, especially of qualified human resources and eliminate fragmentation and duplication of efforts and activities.—APP