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All ASEAN states have stepped down or are in the process
of stepping down their pandemic alert status to the post-pandemic level.
We agreed that the H1N1 pandemic no longer poses an immediate public health threat to the international community.
H1N1 has passed its peak and is now in transition to becoming seasonal influenza.
However, we also agreed that it is important to continue to educate our people on good hygiene practices
and encourage high risk groups to go for vaccination if they have not yet done.
We noted that the World Health Organization is currently reviewing the influenza pandemic status
and the status of its current pandemic alert level.
Going forward, we urge the World Health Organization to review the pandemic alert levels
to take into consideration the severity or virulence factor for future pandemics.
When fighting international disease outbreaks,
we are most effective when working with as many of our neighbours as possible.
So we decided that we should task our senior officials to study
how the collaborations can be implemented with additional members within the EAS family.
After a very good discussion, the Myanmar Health Minister raised the issue that
while H1N1 has gone past the peak, there are evergreen issues we have to deal with.
And in fact in later part of the day in the plenary,
we will discuss one proposal from Vietnam about raising the awareness of our people about dengue.
Dengue continues to be a big problem, both in mortality as well as in morbidity.
So Vietnam’s suggestion was to declare a common day and call it an ASEAN Dengue Day.
We will fix a date later on and you all agreed that it’s a very good idea.
And certainly the dengue problem is a real issue in this part of the world.