The New York Times - August 25, 2007
Elisabeth Rosenthal

Because of this risk, greater international cooperation among governments and scientists is essential, said Dr. Margaret F. C. Chan, director general of the health organization.

"Given today's universal vulnerability to these threats, better security calls for global solidarity," Dr. Chan said in a statement that accompanied the World Health Report 2007, issued in Geneva, where the organization is based. "The new watchwords are diplomacy, cooperation, transparency and preparedness."

Much of the report focuses on how health officials should respond to a more globalized world. In 2003 the outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, was spread from mainland China to Hong Kong and then on to Singapore and Canada via airline passengers. Another factor is that many migrants now travel around the world for work. A polio epidemic that started in Nigeria most likely moved to countries including Yemen on ships carrying migrant workers, organization officials say.

Dr. Chan, who was Hong Kong's top health official during the SARS outbreak there, has been in her new office less than a year, and the health organization's experiences during her tenure have underlined the need for improved international cooperation and communication.

For much of the year, the World Health Organization was haggling with China and Indonesia over their unwillingness to share samples of the avian influenza, or bird flu, virus. Both countries have serious problems with the disease, and such samples help international scientists at the health organization track the spread and evolution of the virus, to better predict the likelihood of a global pandemic.

But the samples can also be used for vaccine development, and some countries express fears that the profits and credit for a vaccine would be lost if samples were sent to Geneva.

Likewise, in June, an American's travels in Europe with what was thought to be a highly dangerous strain of tuberculosis were not reported to the authorities at the health organization, who might have restricted his movements. It was notified of his presence, known to United States health officials, only after he was on a plane headed home. Because of that he was able to fly from Italy to the Czech Republic and then to Canada, potentially infecting others. Doctors later found that his tuberculosis was not the extremely dangerous variety.

The health organization's revised International Health Regulations, which took effect in June, prod countries to be more active in screening for and reporting disease. But the group has few tools to force compliance.

Thirty-nine new pathogens have been identified since 1969 - including SARS, H.I.V./AIDS and the Ebola virus - a higher rate of discovery than at any other time.

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