Health ministers from South Korea, Japan and China agreed to jointly tackle future Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreaks and new diseases that pose common problems for the Northeast Asian countries, the government said Sunday.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said policymakers at the tripartite meeting held in Kyoto issued a joint statement calling for concerted efforts to deal with various threats to public health, universal health coverage, the rapidly aging population and non-communicable diseases.

"Through the lessons learned from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the MERS outbreak in Korea, we have reaffirmed the need for ever closer cooperation under this tripartite framework to respond to public health emergencies including emerging infectious diseases," the statement said.

Since the first MERS case was confirmed on May 20, South Korea reported 187 cases of the respiratory illness, with 38 people succumbing to complications brought on by the virus. Most deaths involved people with underlying medical problems like cancer.

MERS, first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, has a fatality rate of over 40 percent, although in South Korea only some 20 percent of people infected died. There are currently no vaccines or treatment for the disease.

In addition, the three neighboring countries pledged to expand cooperation with the World Health Organization to strengthen monitoring of health threats and share vital information.

At the gathering in the Japanese city, South Korea's Health Minister Chung Chin-youb proposed creating a hotline that can speed up exchanges of disease-related information between Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing.

He added that the three countries should set up a consultative body to handle new disease outbreaks.

The policymaker then said South Korea plans to share its MERS experience with Japan and China.

Besides MERS, top officials from the three countries said population aging and a rise in the number of people struggling with chronic illnesses are putting a burden on social outlays.

"The three sides concurred on the need to share policy measures in such areas as dementia, anti-smoking and social services to take care of senior citizens," the ministry said.

The tripartite gathering was first launched in 2007, at the request of South Korea to deal with the Influenza A scare that swept through the world. (Yonhap)