| New York, Apr 16 2003 10:00AM
In a crucial discovery towards finding diagnostic tools and treatment for Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the United Nations World Health Organization
(WHO) announced today that a new pathogen, a member of the coronavirus family
never before seen in humans, is the cause of the newly emergent infectious
disease.
The speed with which the virus, which first surfaced in China in November, was
identified was the result of close international collaboration of 13
laboratories from 10 countries. While many lines of evidence over recent weeks
found strong links to this virus, which belongs to the family that causes the
common cold, final confirmation came today, WHO said in a statement in Geneva.
"The pace of SARS research has been astounding," Dr. David Heymann, Executive
Director of WHO Communicable Diseases programmes, said. "Because of an
extraordinary collaboration among laboratories from countries around the world,
we now know with certainty what causes SARS."
Since it emerged in Guangdong Province in China in November, SARS has infected
3,235 people as of 15 April, killing 154, with the vast majority of cases in
China and Hong Kong. But the disease has spread throughout East Asia and as far
afield as Canada, the United States and Brazil.
"Today, the collaboration continues as top laboratory researchers have come to
WHO to design the next steps, a strategy for transforming these basic research
discoveries into diagnostic tools which will help us to successfully control
this disease," Mr. Heymann said. “Now we can move away from methods like
isolation and quarantines and move aggressively towards modern intervention
strategies, including specific treatments and eventually vaccination. With the
establishment of the causative agent, we are a crucial step closer."
Stressing the collaborative effort of the contributing laboratories, Klaus
Stöhr, WHO virologist and the coordinator of the research network, said: "The
people in this network have put aside profit and prestige to work together to
find the cause of this new disease and to find way new ways of fighting it. In
this globalized world, such collaboration is the only way forward in tackling
emerging diseases."
WHO and the laboratories dedicated their discovery to Dr. Carlo Urbani, the WHO
scientist who first alerted the world to the existence of SARS in Hanoi, Viet
Nam, and who died from the disease in Bangkok on 29 March.
2003-04-16 00:00:00.000 | |
