The annual assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) approved in Geneva Monday a new set of regulations on national and international response to disease outbreaks.

"This is a major step forward for international health. These new regulations recognize that diseases do not respect national boundaries. They are urgently needed to help limit the threats to public health," WHO chief Lee Jong-wook said at the World Health Assembly.

While the original regulations agreed in 1969 were designed to help monitor and control six serious infectious diseases --cholera, plague, yellow fever, smallpox, relapsing fever and typhus, the new rules cover a broader range of public health emergencies, including some emerging diseases, according to the WHO.

"The need for new rules and operational mechanisms ... has been most clearly shown during the recent outbreaks of SARS in 2003 and avian influenza in 2004-2005," the Geneva-based agency said in a statement.

Under the revised regulations, countries have much broader obligations to build national capacity for routine preventive measures as well as to detect and respond to public health emergencies of international concern.

The routine measures include public health actions at port, airports, land borders and on means of transport.

The new rules also stipulated that the occurrence of a list of diseases such as smallpox, polio and SARS must be reported to the WHO.

The regulations will formally come into force two years from the date on which they were approved by the assembly.

(Xinhua News Agency May 24, 2005)