SARS cited as lesson at security summit
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer
The coordinated global response to this year's SARS outbreak was a good dress rehearsal for a biological attack by terrorists, experts told delegates to the Asia-Pacific Homeland Security Summit in Honolulu yesterday.
What's more, Hawai'i is positioned to play a leading educational and scientific role in containing similar outbreaks — natural and criminal — of diseases that now can spread around the world in a matter of hours.
"There's a real opportunity to use the geographical and cultural resources here for training and bilateral
education efforts," said Dr. Duane Gubler, incoming head of the University of Hawai'i's new Asia Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease.
To do that, the institute will have to develop into a must-stop place for officials from the Mainland and Asia who sometimes think of Hawai'i as too isolated to fill such roles.
"Part of the goal is to make it the best in the world, so that they'll have to think of us whenever there is a problem," said Gubler, who takes over his new position in January after finishing work as senior scientific research adviser for the National Center for Infectious Diseases.
Singapore's swift, decisive action in containing the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic earlier this year offers lessons that could be applied to future biological threats by terrorists, said Chan Heng Chee, Singapore's ambassador to the United States.
Beginning with the first cases, Singapore chose to treat the problem as a national threat, Chee said. It quickly formed a ministerial-level task force, set up special hospitals to isolate patients and imposed strict quarantine procedures backed by prison terms.
Singapore also set up new screening procedures at its borders, including thermal scanners that discreetly measure body temperature and identify incoming visitors with an alarmingly high reading.
Chee admitted some of the measures might not be tolerated in cultures that stress personal liberties, but "it's best to overreact than underreact," he said, "and better to release more information than allow frustration and fears to multiply."
Gubler said international cooperation to fight SARS was the best he had seen in the infectious disease community, and he hoped Ha-
wai'i could lead in creating laboratories in Asia building on that experience.
"We need that type of international cooperation to get ahead of these epidemics before they get on a plane and fly around the world," he said.
Later, Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, told the more than 500 delegates it would take more than military might to win the war against terrorism. The world also needs to promote institutions of good government that provide better educational, economic and social opportunities if peace is to prevail, he said.
"Military intelligence or policing actions alone won't do it," Fargo said. "Long term, we have to look at all the underlying causes. It's not just poverty. We wish it were that simple."
Fargo cited recent exercises in the Philippines in which U.S. troops helped train military forces, built bridges and wells, and worked with villagers to eliminate fear of terrorism as the type of integrated effort needed.
The military also will have to be smart about how it allocates resources, he said.
Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com
