Filed at 5:58 a.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- Genetic research could help developing nations make dramatic advances in providing medical care for their people, scientists from the World Health Organization say, though they caution that mapping the gene code doesn't mean a cure for all diseases.

The new WHO report aims to provide a strategy to ensure that the fruits of genomic research are used to improve the health of people in all countries -- to narrow the gap in health between rich and poor countries instead of widening it.

``Genome research, if we handle it correctly, can change the world for all health care,'' Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO director-general. ``In particular, it has the potential to allow developing countries to leap frog decades of medical development and bring their citizens greatly improved care and modern methods in the much more immediate future.''

The report, released Tuesday, recommends a new global health research fund, with initial funds of $3 billion to allocate genetic research money. Half of the money would go to scientists researching diseases dominant in developing countries.

Besides mapping the human genome, scientists are unraveling the genetic structure of scores of disease-causing germs, the insects and other animals that transmit diseases to humans, and nutritionally or medically important plants.

Most of the research is being done in the rich industrial nations, although Brazil, China, India and Cuba are notable exceptions, the report said.

``Developing nations are in danger of being left out of the benefits of genomic research,'' said Dr. Peter A. Singer, director of University of Toronto's Joint Center for Bioethics, who was not involved with the report.

The report said experts believe that genome research will, in the long term, lead to major benefits for the prevention, diagnosis and management of many diseases, but it will take decades for many of the advances to get to clinics.

The 2001 announcement that scientists had completed a draft of the human genome exaggerated its potential, the report's authors said.

``We were positive in that we do believe it's going to have an impact on health, but we think it's been rather overstated, particularly in its time scale,'' said Sir David Weatherall, lead writer of the report and professor at Oxford University's Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine.

``The papers said we're going to live until we're 200, there will be a cure for every ill, that every baby will be looked at at birth, all its genetic deficiencies isolated and fixed up,'' he said. ``This is garbage.''

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On the Net:

``Genomics and World Health'' report: http://www.who.int