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WHO asks for implementation of int'l health regulations, timely information sharing

24 May 2013 22:41 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The World Health Organization (WHO) Friday asked for its members to implement obligations to the International Health Regulations and provide timely information to WHO, stressing that WHO collaborating centers would not take profits from intellectural property right on viruses, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO, told health ministers attending the WHO's annual conference in Geneva that when it came to new and emerging infections, it was not a country's problem but a global one, which required a coordination mechanism, whereby the assets of the world could be pooled together to figure out as soon as possible whether any new pathogene was to pose a public health threat.

The chief of the health organization urged its memberships to ensure the sharing of virus speciments or other speciments of any new and emerging infection with WHO's network of collaborating laboratories.

"WHO collaborating centers, all of them, will not take intellectural property right to stop the sharing of information and to stop or delay the development of diagnosic tests or serology tests," Chan stressed.

The director-general reinforced the urgency for WHO to work with Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and other Middle East countries with cases of human infections with novel coronavirus, adding that WHO would organize joint mission teams as soon as possible to collect all the facts and to do a proper risk assessment based on all available information.

"Without that proper risk assessment, we can not have clarity on the incubation period, on the symptoms of the desease, on the proper clinical management and then last but not least, on travel advise," Chan underlined.

On Thursday at the annual health assembly in Geneva, Saudi Arabia said that the development of diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus infection has been delayed for three months by a foreign laboratory's patent rights on the virus.

As for this, Chan warned that profiting from the virus in virtue of intellectural property right needed to be addressed, saying that intellectural property was not allowed to impede public health actions.