'Give asylum seekers health tests'

Health checks for asylum seekers and immigrants would be compulsory under controversial Tory plans in the wake of the Sars crisis.

Every person wanting to live in the UK would be forced to undergo a full medical examination before arriving in the country.

They would be given chest X-rays and blood tests at their own expense as part of a screening process to weed out those who would become a drain on the NHS.

The move came as the Government prepared a dramatic U-turn by making Sars a notifiable disease, which means sufferers could be forcibly quarantined and their clothing incinerated.

And the World Health Organisation fuelled alarm by describing the disease as "the first global epidemic of the 21st Century".

Tories said Sars had highlighted the threat to Britain and especially London from the dangers of deadly epidemics in the age of modern travel.

But the timing of the new policy - just three days before crucial elections in local government, Scotland and Wales - is bound to court charges that the party is playing the immigration card to boost their vote.

Shadow health secretary Dr Liam Fox travelled to Australia during the Easter parliamentary holiday to study the routine use of so-called "health screening" of immigrants.

"The rate of tuberculosis in Britain is over twice that in Australia, while London's rate is some 25 times higher than the Australian rate," he said.

"London has become the TB capital of the west. We can't allow it to become the dumping ground for for the world's diseases."

Health screening is thought to

reduce the risk of spreading diseases and to ease pressure on the NHS.

Although Dr Fox said checking immigrants and asylum seekers would not help reduce the Sars epidemic - because the virulent disease is borne by thousands of travellers, students and businessmen each day - it could help reduce the spread of TB and Aids.

In Australia, applicants with TB are ordered to obtain treatment before being admitted. Only those with strains of the disease that are highly resistant to treatment are actually refused entry altogether.

The checks would also cut down on so-called "health tourism" where people requiring costly drugs or operations come to Britain to milk the free NHS.

"Sars has brought into sharp focus the whole issue that international migration brings to the health arena," said Dr Fox.

"It is time Britain gave its people the same sort of protection that other western governments give their people."

Dr Fox said full health care rights for all people granted residence in the UK would be maintained.

And emergency treatment for any person in the UK would not be affected by the policy.

Worldwide, Sars has killed at least 319 people since it surfaced in November in southern China and made more than 4,800 ill, mostly in Asia.

The WHO reported today that Sars may have peaked in Canada and other countries outside China.

Canada is hosting an emergency international conference on Sars this week in Toronto. The city has now reported the 21st death from the illness after a 79-year-old woman died at the weekend - the fifth person killed by Sars in three days.

Toronto is the epicentre of the biggest Sars outbreak outside Asia. More than 250 probable or suspected cases have been reported in the area, including all 21 deaths in Canada. More than half the reported cases have made a full recovery.

The Sars conference scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday will discuss ways of treating the illness and preventing its spread in the community, said Farah Mohamed, a spokeswoman for Health Minister Anne McLellan.

"It will be a meeting of international experts and the focus will be on the situation in Canada," Mohamed said.

By holding the conference in Toronto, Canadian officials hoped to show the WHO the city is a safe travel venue despite the Sars outbreak, which has been confined almost exclusively to hospitals treating SARS patients. Canada was outraged when WHO issued a warning on Wednesday against non-essential travel to Toronto.