The Philippines said yesterday it would ask the World Health Organization (WHO) to reevaluate the country's level of infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) after several countries moved to restrict the entry of Filipinos over the health scare.
The Philippines, which has reported 10 infections by the pneumonia-like respiratory illness and two deaths, has been classified as having a "medium" level of risk of transmission of the virus.
A "medium-level" designation by the WHO means the virus has been passed on to at least three people from an original carrier.
"We and the Department of Foreign Affairs would be protesting against the WHO in Geneva to clear the classification of the Philippines regarding SARS," said Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit.
While Manila has no plans to file a formal protest, DFA spokesman Victoriano Lecaros said it was "more correct to say we want to get that listing rectified."
"The intention is to get that thing corrected," Lecaros said.
WHO country representative Jean-Marc Olive was to meet later yesterday with Foreign Secretary Blas Ople to discuss the issue.
Taiwan, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates are among those who reportedly have banned the entry of Filipino workers because of fears of SARS, in response to the WHO designation of the Philippines as a medium-level country for SARS infections.
Such restrictions would be a severe blow to the country's economy, which relies on the remittances of more than seven million Filipinos working overseas as a major source of foreign currency.
He called the WHO listing "harsh and unfair" because it lumped the Philippines, with just 10 confirmed cases, into the same category as nations that had reported more than 100 SARS infections.
"There has been a failure with WHO Geneva's interpretation," Dayrit said, noting there was little evidence to suggest SARS was spreading through the Philippines.
The health secretary spoke of the string of phone calls he had made to officials in other countries as well as the WHO headquarters to discuss the designation.
WHO representative Olive stressed in a statement on Friday that the Philippines presented a "negligible" SARS risk to travellers and did not deserve to be included in travel advisories.
Late on Friday, Singapore, removed the Philippines from a travel advisory after it had been placed on the list a day earlier
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the