About APEC-EINet

Emerging Infections: Their Importance to APEC

The APEC Emerging Infections Network is based at the University of Washington in Seattle. Further information about the project and its aims is below.

• Emerging Infections: Their Importance to APEC
• Project Description: Abstract or Full Text
• APEC Action Framework on Infectious Diseases (Approved by the APEC Industrial Science and Technology Working Group in March 1998)
• EINet News Briefs compilation of current information about infectious diseases.

Emerging infections include diseases that are new (such as HIV/AIDS), diseases that are old but re–emerging as health threats (such as Tuberculosis), and diseases that are changing their resistance to treatment. They are important to our APEC community because:

• They cause preventable illness and death
• They drain our economies through the direct costs of treatment and hospitalization
• They generate indirect costs from time lost from work and reduced purchasing power
• They lead to unfounded trade sanctions that hinder economic activity

Telecommunications provides a new avenue for enhanced, rapid communications about disease threats in our region.