APEC Leaders’ Statement on Health Security
In Los Cabos, we, APEC Leaders, "acknowledged that
investing in health will benefit economic growth", and we "instructed Ministers
to build on work underway to establish a regional public health surveillance network and
an early warning system to monitor and respond to critical disease outbreaks in the
region, and critical threats such as bio-terrorism." The Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS) outbreak this year, which had grave economic consequences for the region,
demonstrated the importance of prevention, surveillance/detection, and coordinated
responses to disease outbreaks, whether naturally occurring, like SARS, or intentionally
caused, like the 2001 anthrax incidents in the United States. APEC’s Infectious
Disease Strategy, agreed at Shanghai in October 2001, already laid the groundwork for a
commitment to health security measures against both naturally occurring and intentionally
caused disease outbreaks.
We will work to strengthen our public health infrastructure
to detect, respond to, and prevent bio-terrorism and naturally occurring disease
outbreaks. We will protect our populations from dangerous pathogens, and secure dangerous
pathogens against diversion. We will safeguard materials, equipment, technology, and
expertise applicable to biological weapons to prevent their diversion to criminal
purposes.
We commit to take effective domestic measures to protect
public health and undertake, where appropriate, cooperative efforts that may involve both
government and non-government institutions, working with and through international
conventions and fora, including action to:
- Pursue focused efforts to
monitor diseases, contain outbreaks, especially those that could have international
consequences, and coordinate responses via mechanisms such as the APEC Emerging Infections
Network and, in the event of a disease outbreak, in collaboration with relevant
multilateral organizations.
- Ensure a high level of
physical security, accountability, and safety with respect to storage, use, and transfer
of dangerous biological pathogens, consistent with current national and international
efforts.
- Establish an effective code of
domestic ethical and operational conduct for bio-scientists or promote such codes where
they already exist.
- Strengthen - or introduce
where they do not exist - laws, regulations and enforcement mechanisms to require strict
export and import controls on dual-use biological materials and equipment, and criminalize
offensive weapons activity.
We welcome the establishment by Singapore and the United
States of a new Regional Emerging Disease Intervention (REDI) Center based in Singapore to
serve as a regional resource for training and research. The Center will help us build our
individual and collective capacity and hence will facilitate our cooperative efforts to
monitor, respond to, and prevent critical infectious disease threats in the Asia Pacific
region.
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