DATE=6/29/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=DISEASE-NATIONAL SECURITY (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-263905
BYLINE=DAVID MCALARY
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=
INTERNET=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: A U-S intelligence report says AIDS, malaria,
and other infectious diseases are destabilizing many
nations and could trigger humanitarian and military
conflicts that will force the United States to
respond. International public health officials say
only a massive global effort can avoid what they call
an emerging catastrophe. V-O-A's David McAlary
reports.
TEXT: A recent U-S Central Intelligence Agency study
says infectious diseases pose a broad international,
economic, political, and security threat.
Agency official David Gordon told the House of
Representatives International Relations Committee
Thursday that the worst infections - AIDS,
tuberculosis, and malaria - are likely to slow
economic development and undermine societies in
countries and regions of interest to the United
States.
/// GORDON ACT ///
New and re-emerging infectious diseases will
pose a rising - and in the worst case, a
catastrophic - global health threat that will
complicate U-S and global security over the next
20 years. The diseases will endanger U-S
citizens at home and abroad, threaten U-S armed
forces deployed overseas, and exacerbate social
and political instability in key countries and
regions where the United States has significant
interests.
/// END ACT ///
The World Health Organization says infectious diseases
kill 13 million people a year worldwide, causing half
of all deaths in developing nations.
Mr. Gordon says this disease burden, especially from
AIDS, is likely to provoke and aggravate social
fragmentation, economic decay, and political
polarization in the hardest hit countries -- mainly in
sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Asia, and former Soviet
republics.
The C-I-A official points out that economic losses are
already large and growing in many countries,
especially more advanced developing nations such as
South Africa.
The director of the World Health Organization's
communicable diseases division - David Heymann [HAY-
man] - told the U-S lawmakers Africa's gross domestic
product, the broad measure of economic output, would
be 100 million dollars higher if just one disease -
malaria - had been eliminated years ago.
Dr. Heymann told the lawmakers the suffering and
social consequences from infectious diseases are
avoidable.
/// HEYMANN ACT //
We are the first generation ever to have the
means of protecting the world from infectious
diseases. Today we possess the knowledge and
the drugs, vaccines, and commodities to prevent
or cure the high mortality infections -
tuberculosis, malaria, H-I-V, diarrheal
diseases, pneumonia, and measles.
/// END ACT ///
The World Health Organization official says a massive
global effort costing 15 billion dollars could cut
deaths and disability from infectious diseases in half
by 2010. He says he expects the United States and the
seven other leading industrial nations to call for
such an effort at their summit meeting next month on
Okinawa.
French President Jacques Chirac said in Paris Thursday
he would stress the need for increased development aid
at the summit.
Legislation pending before the U-S Congress would
double U-S spending on global health from one billion
to two billion dollars a year. One of its sponsors is
Representative Joseph Crowley, whose district in
Brooklyn, New York, found itself unexpectedly hosting
an outbreak of imported West Nile fever last year.
/// CROWLEY ACT ///
In today's world, no nation is an island. We
are all in this together. Failing to make a
commitment to global health now will only cost
us more in the long run.
/// END ACT ///
(SIGNED)
NEB/DEM/ENE/KBK
29-Jun-2000 16:17 PM EDT (29-Jun-2000 2017 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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