International Coordination

The World Health Organization (WHO) played a vital role in the containment of the first global outbreak of SARS.

After issuing a global alert about cases of severe atypical pneumonia following reports of cases among staff in the Hanoi and Hong Kong hospitals on March 12, the WHO received additional reports of more cases. Three days later, the WHO issued emergency travel recommendations to alert health authorities, physicians, and the traveling public to what was now perceived to be a worldwide threat to health. The alert included the first WHO emergency travel advisory to international travelers, healthcare professionals and health authorities, advising all individuals traveling to affected areas to be watchful for the development of symptoms for a period of 10 days after returning (http://www.who.int/csr/sarsarchive/2003_03_15/en/).

The decision was based on five different but related factors (WHO, Status of the Outbreak):

1.The causative agent, and therefore the potential for continued spread, of this new disease were not yet known.

2.The outbreaks appeared to pose a great risk to health workers who managed patients, and to the family members and other close contacts of patients.

3.Many different antibiotics and antiviral therapies had been tried empirically and did not seem to have an effect.

4.Though the numbers were initially small, a significant percentage of patients (25 of 26 hospital staff in Hanoi, and 24 of 39 hospital staff in Hong Kong) had rapidly progressed to respiratory failure,