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2003 APEC Health Ministerial Meeting

Bangkok, Thailand | 28 June 2003
We, the Health Ministers of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), met today in Bangkok, Thailand, to decide on common actions to contain the spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), increase future defenses against similar infectious disease outbreaks as well as other new threats and challenges, and rebuild the confidence of people in the Asia-Pacific Region.
SARS has already affected the human and economic health of economies in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. The disease continues to touch the lives of our people in many ways by affecting their health, travel, employment, lifestyle, and self-assurance. At the economy level, SARS has affected trade and business mobility and threatened the stability and growth of economies.
Much remains unknown about SARS, the diversity of its clinical features, how to treat it, and the likelihood of future outbreaks. Controlling SARS requires continued vigorous surveillance and containment of new cases, intensive regional and global collaboration, biomedical research, implementation of effective strategies at all levels, appropriate use of available resources including capacity building assistance and the sharing of timely and accurate information about the disease with national officials, international partners and the public.
Excellent work and cooperation has already been undertaken by APEC Member Economies to overcome the threat of SARS. Measures, including border health screening, quarantining and hospitalisation of suspected and confirmed SARS patients and sharing information in the tourism and airline sectors, have made life, travel and trade in the region safer. We are fully aware, however, that this is only the start.
SARS is becoming less a decisive factor on travel around the Asia-Pacific region. Early resumption of normal business travel and tourism is essential for overcoming the economic damage caused by SARS in recent months. We welcome the progress made by affected economies in bringing the SARS epidemic under control, and express confidence in the medium- and long-term growth for the region, including affected economies. We applaud the practical measures including the relief packages adopted by affected economies, and encourage them to take further fiscal and monetary measures, if necessary, to maintain and revive growth.
In addition to APEC Member Economies, we thank the World Health Organization for its central role in the fight against SARS. We acknowledge with appreciation the swift and effective collaboration of the scientific and medical communities, which led to the exceptional progress in understanding and containing SARS. The international research cooperation that helped to identify and genetically sequence the virus was unprecedented and surely will lead to more timely development of reliable diagnostic tools, therapeutic agents and a vaccine. We encourage strengthening collaboration between APEC and other major international and regional scientific organization and medical centers of excellence. We are deeply grateful for the dedication and sacrifice of front-line health care workers in responding to the challenge of SARS. We express sincere gratitude to them all for their heroic efforts.
Recognizing that infectious diseases can have a deleterious impact on trade and regional security, we appreciate that national and international experiences with SARS provide lessons that can improve our responses to future infectious disease outbreaks, including effectively dealing with public health, economic, and social consequences. In this regard, we encourage as many bilateral and regional joint projects as possible to look into the pathology and epidemiology of SARS.
We welcome the initiatives endorsed by the ASEAN+3 Health Ministers Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and highly applaud the strong political commitment by Leaders of ASEAN and China meeting in Bangkok to immediately address the issues of SARS as well as support the collaboration to respond swiftly to the impact of SARS on peoples in the region.
Our meeting in Bangkok has reaffirmed our commitment to continued surveillance, response, capacity building, communications, cross-sector partnerships, political leadership, research and development and other implementation measures to combat SARS, to protect our people and enable the resumption of normal travel and trade in the region. We support and encourage the spirit of regional and international efforts in fighting the SARS epidemic, and agree to vigorously pursue the following APEC common actions:
  1. Implement the APEC Action Plan on SARS quickly and in full. We ask relevant APEC fora to respond to the Action Plan in similar manner.1
  2. Provide complete, accurate and timely information, which is essential for building public awareness and confidence in and between economies. We agree to share all relevant information immediately with the WHO and also through the APEC Emerging Infections Network (EiNet),2 and where practicable, through information networks that have already been established, including designated telephone contact for Health Officials or health professionals, as the case may be, among economies for prompt response and information sharing. We will endeavor to inform each other in advance of any measures that will restrict the mobility of people between our economies, and to provide comprehensive information on SARS-related entry requirements on the APEC Secretariat's SARS webpage. This information will be updated regularly, on a daily basis, if necessary.
  3. Collaborate with and provide assistance to the WHO's Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.
  4. Promote Common Guiding Principles on Health Screening for International Travel (See Annex A). We agree that any measures we adopt to screen passengers will be internationally-recognized, science-based, and will address actual risk factors without stigmatizing portions of the traveling public.
  5. Endorse the APEC Secretariat's proposal for a communications strategy to respond to the SARS crisis and other infectious diseases that threaten physical health of our people and economic health of our region. The measures outlined will reinforce and complement communications strategies at the individual-economy level and the APEC-forum level, and will be useful in addressing future disease threats in our region.
  6. Strengthen the intra-APEC cooperation in fighting against SARS and preventing it from reoccurring. In this connection, priority should be given to sharing case studies, technology transfer and provision of medical assistance to affected economy in the battle against SARS and other emerging infectious diseases in the future.
  7. Request APEC Senior Officials to work with the APEC Industrial Science and Technology Working Group (ISTWG) and health officials to enhance the implementation of the APEC Infectious Diseases Strategy and its Emerging Infections Network, including considering to establish a SOM special Task Force on Health.
  8. Welcome the APEC project on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness to build capacity for responding to influenza and emerging infectious diseases, which will be implemented beginning in 2003.
  9. Appoint senior health officials to the APEC Health Virtual Network to follow up on what we have learnt from this meeting and from the SARS crisis and to facilitate responses to existing or future emerging infectious diseases. The virtual network will be hosted in a fashion similar to the APEC SARS Webpage at http://www.apecsec.org.sg/whatsnew/SARS.html..
  10. Welcome the Tourism Working Group's 2003 project on Tourism Risk Management in the Asia-Pacific Region, which will develop best practices for man-made and natural disaster recovery for the tourism sector. We support responses to SARS that are enduring in nature and can be utilized for future infectious disease outbreaks and other similar crises.
  11. Reaffirm that SARS control measures must not become non-tariff barriers to trade and travel. As there is no evidence that goods and products from economies with local transmission of SARS pose a risk to public health, disinfecting or barring such goods or products is unnecessary.
  12. Urge those countries in and outside the region who have experienced SARS outbreaks to institute demonstrably effective disease control measures, including surveillance in order to restore the confidence of the traveling public. We also urge all economies to speedily move to lift any remaining SARS-related travel restrictions to APEC member economies, or regions of APEC member economies, that have been removed from the list of affected areas and areas with local SARS transmission by the WHO.
  13. Call on APEC customs authorities to provide priority clearance for medical equipment and supplies imported for SARS response purposes.
  14. Reaffirm our commitment to the Bogor Goals and to our Leaders' vision of a prosperous and healthy Asia-Pacific community