TAIWAN PRESIDENT CALLS FOR INT'L MONITORING OF BIRD FLU IN CHINA.

TAIPEI, Nov 1 Asia Pulse - Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian urged the international community Monday to jointly monitor the avian flu situation in China to plug any possible holes in the global pandemic alert and response system.

Chen made the appeal at a high-level meeting on avian flu prevention amid mounting global concern about the possibility of an influenza pandemic.

Senior officials from the Department of Health, the Council of Agriculture and other relevant government agencies attended the meeting -- the second of its kind held in recent weeks -- to show government concern about the public health issue.

Noting that China boasts the world's largest bird and poultry population, Chen said the international community should jointly push China to make its avian flu situation transparent. A week earlier, the central Chinese province of Hunan reported an avian flu outbreak that has killed hundreds of chickens and ducks.

"The world should jointly monitor the avian flu situation in China and push China to honestly and promptly report any outbreak to the World Health Organization (WHO)," Chen said.

Taiwan has already had a taste of just how much devastation an infectious disease can cause, Chen recalled. In 2003, SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, emerged in China and spread rapidly across the world via air travel, killing nearly 800 people and causing millions of dollars-worth of economic losses. Taiwan was one of the hardest SARS-hit countries.

"The devastation was caused mainly because China failed to report the outbreak to the WHO in the first instance and even tried to cover it up, " Chen said, adding that similar mistakes should not be repeated.