CANADA: The World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday it would review its hotly contested warning to travellers against visiting Toronto because of SARS after Canada provided new information on the outbreak.
But the UN agency, whose advice last Wednesday to avoid Canada's business capital triggered local outrage, said it was not bending to political pressure from the Canadian government.
And it added that it was not certain that the review, set for tomorrow, would lead to a withdrawal of the alert, which WHO issued because it feared the killer respiratory disease was continuing to spread locally and that Canada was still exporting cases to other countries.
"We have received a lot of information from Health Canada and we are reviewing it," said WHO spokesman Mr Dick Thompson. "It is possible we may change it (the warning), it is possible we may not," he said.
The new information related to the criteria - local transmission and export - used by WHO when it added Toronto to a list of places, including Hong Kong and parts of China, that people should avoid if possible, he said.
He declined to give details about the new information.
The disease has killed some 315 people, mainly in Asia, and infected over 5,200, of whom some 2,300 have recovered, since SARS first sparked a global health alarm in mid-March. Twenty people have died of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Canada, which is the only part of the world outside Asia where there have been fatalities.
The WHO warning caused an uproar in Canada, with medical officials complaining the edict was unfair as SARS had not spread into the community but was confined to the original cluster of cases and health workers. But there have been cases of people apparently catching the disease, which so far has no cure, there and then travelling on to other countries, including the Philippines, Australia and the United States.
The latest suspected incident was reported on Thursday when Bulgaria's health ministry said a Bulgarian man was suffering symptoms similar to SARS and was hospitalised after returning from Toronto where he had spent several months.
Mr Jon Liden, spokesman for WHO chief Mr Gro Harlem Brundtland, said the world health body would not keep travel advisories for any city or country a moment longer than necessary because it was fully aware of the damage they did to local economies.
"We see the need to rescind it as soon as possible, while at the same time never being seen to compromise public health," he said.
The key condition needed to lift the travel advisory was no further incidence of spread or export over a three-week period - equal to double the believed incubation period.
Mr Liden dismissed any suggestion of WHO bowing to political pressure from Canada or elsewhere. - (Reuters)