Later this month Health Canada will release new SARS recommendations to help health care workers and governments respond to the challenges posed by the impending influenza season.
Dr. Arlene King, director of Health Canada's Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Division, says they will provide enhanced SARS case definitions, surveillance processes and testing protocols.
The recommendations were drafted during a closed-door meeting in Ottawa in September. About 25 representatives from the World Health Organization (WHO), US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Canadian officials attended. Health Canada refused to provide participants' names.
One participant, WHO communicable disease expert Dr. Angela Merianos, says the “very productive” gathering offered a rare opportunity to examine SARS issues from different perspectives.
Dr. David Patrick, director of epidemiology at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, said it brought together “all the right people.”
Journalists were not permitted to attend the meeting and all decisions were kept under wraps. “We're refining all of the documents that were presented and discussed,” said King. After being revised, they will be distributed to participants and then published on the Web.
“This is not an unusual process,” King said. “We normally don't have anyone from the media present at our working group meetings. … We invite people that we consider to be the key stakeholders to make sure we get the product we need. And it enables freer discussion of the meat of the issues,” avoiding “scrutiny of the process.”
“… We really want opportunities as a scientific community to get together and debate issues, and I think there are forums where we do need private opportunities for private discussions. We felt this was one of them, in light of the complexity of the issues.”
The complex issues include questions of human rights. When is it appropriate to isolate someone? When should an individual's contacts be traced? And when are quarantines appropriate? “Issues pertaining to quarantine were certainly discussed,” said Merianos. “It was a very useful exercise.”
But in a separate interview, King said that “we actually didn't get into the issue of quarantining contacts” because public health measures did not have a place in a meeting on surveillance issues.
Responding to questions from CMAJ, King said Health Canada will make a greater effort to include the rationale for its recommendations, since the justification for their creation is often lacking. — Allison Gandey, CMAJ