WHO issues worldwide travel advisory:
A "Worldwide health threat"

Sunday, March 16, 2003 (Hanoi):


The World Health Organization has issued a rare emergency travel advisory on fears that a mysterious form of pneumonia that recently killed three people and hospitalized scores others is spreading beyond Asia and is now a "worldwide health threat".

Most of the outbreaks of the highly contagious illness have been reported this past week in Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam.

Canadian health officials reported that two people who recently arrived from Hong Kong, died in Toronto.

In Frankfurt, Germany, a doctor who treated a patient with the illness in Singapore had to be taken off a New York-Singapore flight on Saturday during a stopover and was hospitalized. Two other people accompanying the doctor were also taken off the flight.

"Until we can get a grip on it, I don't see how it will slow down,'' said WHO spokesman Dick Thompson. "People are not responding to antibiotics or antivirals. It's a highly contagious disease and it's moving around by jet. It's bad."

The Geneva-based WHO said that in the past week it has received more than 150 reports worldwide of the atypical pneumonia, which it called acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

"SARS is now a worldwide health threat," Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO's director general, said in a statement issued in Geneva. "The world needs to work together to find its cause, cure the sick, and stop its spread.''

The advisory said there was no reason to restrict travel but urged people to seek medical attention if they have traveled to infected areas and have shown symptoms of the illness, which include coughing, high fever and shortness of breath.

SARS also may be associated with headache, muscular stiffness, loss of appetite, confusion, rash and diarrhea.

Epidemiologists from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived in Vietnam on Saturday to investigate the outbreak there. A separate team of French doctors were expected to bring medicine and respirators.

Samples were rushed from Hanoi to Atlanta and will be tested immediately to try to determine the cause, said Dave Daigle, a CDC spokesman.

The Hanoi outbreak started after an American businessman traveling from Shanghai via Hong Kong apparently infected up to 31 hospital workers, four of whom were listed in critical condition, including a French doctor. The American was evacuated and died in Hong Kong.

At least 11 more people were admitted to another hospital in the city after coming down with the same flu-like symptoms, officials said Saturday.

In Canada, Toronto officials said Sui-chu Kwan died on March 5 and her adult son, Chi Kwai Tse, 44, died March 13. Four other family members and a person who had been in close contact with the family are in Toronto hospitals, officials said.

Another 155 passengers on the airplane in Frankfurt were temporarily held in quarantine or sent home and told to remain there, German authorities said.

Singapore reported 16 infections and Taipei three. A man from the Philippines who visited Vietnam earlier this month also has been diagnosed with atypical pneumonia.

In Hong Kong, officials on Saturday said eight more hospital workers had come down with pneumonia, bringing the total number there to 37. Two patients were listed in serious condition. (AP)

Found at: www.ndtv.com/addons/printpage.asp?id=36085&callid=1

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