Emerging infectious diseases in Latin America

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In the last four decades new infectious diseases have been recognized almost every year, assuring emerging infectious diseases (EID) as a priority for global health. Some of these diseases, such as AIDS, SARS and the influenza pandemic, have threatened the global health due to their capacity to cross geopolitical boundaries. To respond to this new scenario the countries affiliated with the World Health Organization (WHO) approved a new revision of the International Health Regulations (IHR) in 2005. The IHR is a binding legal instrument, which aim to provide a proper public health response to the international spread of disease avoiding unnecessary interference with international traffic and trade. The new IHR, which have been enforced since June 2007, holds a broader framework, shifting its focus from a small list of notifiable diseases to any event that can become a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Furthermore, the new IHR established a global sensitive mechanism to detect PHEICs using both official notification and media news.

The study analyses the events considered as potential international concern for the Americas under the IHR 2005 framework, from June 2007 to December 2009. The source of data was the World Health Organization Event Management System (WHO-EMS).

During the period studied, 243 events were considered as PHEIC in the region of the Americas.

Despite the political commitment provided by the countries to approve the new IHR, 39.9% were initially detected through news media and 30.0% were notified by the National Focal Point (NFP) within the Ministries of Health. These figures reflect the countries’ remaining tendency to hold the notification until finishing the verification process. 189/243 (77.8%) were infectious disease outbreaks, 8.2% were food safety events and 7.8% were animal health (epizootics) events. The study analyzes the main characteristics of these events and their implication for global health.

The IHR 2005 provides a useful framework for early detection and risk assessment of EID with potential international spread. Each country needs to accomplish the core capacities to perform surveillance and response activities in order to strengthen the global health security.