SARS doctor dies from syndrome he identified

Associated Press
March 29, 2003 11:22 PM ET

GENEVA — The World Health Organization doctor who first identified the outbreak of a global mystery illness died of the disease Saturday.

Italian Dr. Carlo Urbani, 46, a WHO expert on communicable diseases, died in Thailand, where he was being treated after becoming infected while working in Vietnam, the UN. agency said.

Urbani -- who worked in public health programs in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam --was the first doctor to identify severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in an American businessman admitted to a Hanoi, Vietnam, hospital. The businessman later died.

So far, at least 55 people have died from SARS.

WHO said Urbani's work allowed it to increase its surveillance of the disease rapidly, and many new cases were identified and isolated before hospital staff became infected.

"Carlo was a wonderful human being and we are all devastated," said Pascale Brudon, the WHO Representative in Vietnam.

"Carlo was the one who very quickly saw that this was something very strange. When people became very concerned in the hospital, he was there every day, collecting samples, talking to the staff and strengthening infection control procedures."

Urbani, who was married with three children, was also president of Doctors Without Borders-Italy.

"Carlo Urbani's death saddens us all deeply at WHO," WHO Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland said. "His life reminds us again of our true work in public health. Today, we should all pause for a moment and remember the life of this outstanding physician."

SARS has sickened 1,485 people, with the most cases and deaths occurring in China's southern Guangdong province, where an earlier outbreak began in November.