- A World Health Organisation (WHO) official who identified
the outbreak of a killer respiratory illness, Severe Acute Respiratory
Syndrome, has died of the disease.
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- "Dr Carlo Urbani, an expert on communicable diseases,
died today of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)," the Geneva-based
UN health agency said in a statement Saturday.
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- The 46-year-old Italian "was the first World Health
Organisation officer to identify the outbreak of this new disease, in an
American businessman who had been admitted to a hospital in Hanoi",
it added.
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- "Because of his early detection of SARS, global
surveillance was heightened and many new cases have been identified and
isolated before they infected hospital staff."
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- The WHO on Saturday put the number of deaths from SARS
worldwide at 53, with 1,485 people infected.
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- Urbani first saw the US businessman on February 28, two
days after the patient had been admitted to a Hanoi hospital, WHO Communication
Officer Dick Thompson said.
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- WHO colleagues have paid tribute to the married father-of-three,
who had worked for the WHO since 1998.
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- "Carlo was the one who very quickly saw that this
was something very strange," the WHO's representative in Vietnam,
Pascale Brudon, said in the statement.
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- "When people became very concerned in the hospital,
he was there every day, collecting samples, talking to the staff and strengthening
infection control procedures," he added.
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