Source: Xinhua
05-05-2009 14:08
Special Report: Tech MaxCAIRO, May 4 (Xinhua) -- The Cairo-based Arab League (AL) said Monday that the executive office of Arab health ministers' council is to hold a meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss means of confronting the plague, in a fresh bid to fend off the fatal A/H1N1 flu virus via collective measures among Arab nations.
Well-informed sources from the pan-Arab body told Xinhua that Saudi Health Minister Abdullah al-Rabia, head of the office of Arab health ministers' council, invited the Arab health ministers to an emergency meeting for consultation about fighting the new virus.
At the same time, AL said that the Arab health ministers will discuss the available human and technical capabilities to take needed precautionary measures to fight the disease.
Sharing information about the new virus and reporting cases with transparency to World Health Organization (WHO) would be among the topics to be discussed in the meeting, added AL.
AL called for coordination among Arab information ministers to launch awareness campaigns about the disease and take precautions to avert infections.
It also said that it would ask the executive office of Arab health ministers' council to ask the Emergent Arab Health Committee to convene in the AL headquarters in Cairo "urgently" to forge a collective plan to fight the A/H1N1 virus and to insure food and medicine access in case the virus mutated into pandemic.
So far, there is no reported cases in the Arab nations, which have a population of some 300 million, but governments in the region have taken some measures to prevent the disease.
