Three-way effort: Secretary for Health, Welfare & Food Dr York Chow (centre) joins his Mainland and Macau counterparts at a meeting of senior health officials.

The Third Joint Meeting of Senior Health Officials of the Mainland, Hong Kong and Macau has ended with three sides reaching a consensus on measures to prevent avian influenza and SARS.

The three sides considered it necessary to heighten alertness of infectious diseases, in particular SARS and avian influenza, having regard to the potential risk of outbreak from winter to spring.

The attendees agreed to review the ability of the respective public health system in combatting such diseases.

Monitoring programme underway

To prevent an outbreak in winter, the Mainland, Hong Kong and Macau will continue to implement the comprehensive avian influenza monitoring programme to enable effective detection of viruses in the environment.

The details of the programme are as follows:

* Hong Kong will continue the monitoring work at all levels such as poultry farms, imported birds, poultry wholesale and retail markets;

 * Macau will continue to enhance disease prevention including stepping up the health management and surveillance of quarantine, wholesale, retail, slaughtering and processing of imported birds; and

* the Mainland will work for the betterment of avian influenza surveillance by strengthening disease notification with Hong Kong and Macau.

The three sides agreed to further improve the notification mechanism on avian influenza so that the health, inspection and quarantine authorities can identify any abnormality as soon as possible and adopt appropriate preventive measures.

Info exchange on SARS enhanced

To prevent an outbreak of SARS in winter, it was agreed that exchange and collaboration should be enhanced by making use of their respective advantages to step up disease surveillance, information exchange and collaboration on disease prevention to check the spread of the diseases.

They agreed to enhance information exchanges through the mechanism of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Expert Group on the Prevention & Control of Infectious Diseases.

More effort will be put into the following items:

* enhancing the analysis of infectious disease data;

* organising attachment and exchange programmes on infection control and epidemiology training and mutual visits of healthcare professionals; and

* undertaking joint research project in scientific research.

Joint efforts to ensure food safety

To ensure food safety, they agreed to enhance work on the monitoring of food hygiene and quality control from the angle of disease prevention.