Meeting to discuss disease warning systems

The Cook Islands is expected to be among 22 countries attending a meeting in Auckland NZ from 23-26 March 2010 to discuss a new approach aimed at strengthening early warning systems for infectious disease outbreaks. This meeting on syndromic surveillance in the Pacific, is being organized by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC). Currently, infectious disease surveillance is conducted in different ways by Pacific Island countries and territories.
As a result, outbreak information is often not exchanged in a timely manner among neighbouring countries, and this also causes a delay in reporting to the WHO.
The meeting is taking place within the framework of the International Health
Regulations (IHR) 2005 and the Pacific Public Health Surveillance Network (PPHSN). The International Health Regulations, which were revised in 2005, require that all countries in the world are able to detect and respond to public health events of international concern such as outbreaks, and that they report these to WHO within 48 hours. -CP

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