[Cicero]

Excellent post. An earlier article speculated that a virus was involved, but it appeared to be only speculation. But this article does seem to make bacterial infection unlikely.

[Mother Abigail]

A man who shared a Toronto hospital room with a patient believed have [SARS] and an Edmonton-area woman just back from Hong Kong are the latest people believed to have fallen ill with the disease that is puzzling health experts around the globe. That brings to 11 the number of probable and suspected cases in Canada, public health officials said Monday.

[Mother Abigail]

In Australia two women who had recently travelled to China have been hospitalised with symptoms, French news agency AFP reported, although doctors stressed there was no proof they were suffering from the illness.

The Perth woman - aged in her 50s - returned from Hong Kong last week and was admitted to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital as a precaution on Monday, a hospital spokeswoman said. Similarly, doctors at Ballarat Base Hospital [Victoria] are waiting on tests on a 47-year-old Ballarat woman, who returned from a visit to China on Saturday and was admitted on Sunday night with a flu-like illness. [From the second newswire: 47-year-old woman was being treated at Ballarat Base Hospital, while a 44-year-old man was in a stable condition at Royal Melbourne Hospital, making a total of 2 suspected cases in Victoria Australia, the woman returned from China, the man from Hong Kong. -

[NewRomeTacitus]

Great. The illness that tries to kill me every few years has mutated into plague status. All this diversity and multiculturalism has literally evolved a living nightmare.

[mamarainsberry]

Pretty creepy post with your nick. Did you do that on purpose?

[Mother Abigail]

A British man returning from Hong Kong has been admitted to hospital with a suspected case - the UK's first. [from another newswire there was additional information on this case: The suspected case is a man who travelled from Hong Kong to Manchester via Amsterdam on Saturday. He is now being treated in isolation at the Infectious Diseases Unit at North Manchester General Hospital.]

[Mother Abigail]

Two probable cases of SARS have been reported in Germany. Two women in Leipzig have been admitted to a quarantine ward. The women had been in Singapore and Vietnam for vacation and are now probably suffering from the new form of pneumonia. They have been transferred to the isolation ward, says the infectious diseases specialist Bernhard Ruf of the St. Georg Hospital in Leipzig.
****

[Mother Abigail]

A 33-year-old man suspected of being infected by a mysterious form of pneumonia that has sparked a World Health Organization warning was admitted to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv on Monday after returning from Hong Kong and complaining of cough, fever, head and muscle pain, and general flu symptoms.

The Health Ministry emphasized there "is still no laboratory diagnosis of the patient's symptoms and there is no evidence of pneumonia." It was further noted the man was hospitalized due to caution and because of his recent return from Hong Kong.

[FairOpinion]

Thanks for the article. It is quite detailed and disturbing. Sounds like they really gave him several of the strongest antibiotics with no effect. So it's either a virus, or a super-resistant strain.

Not that long ago, they were talking about a super-resistant bacterial infection in So. California. (It's not the same as this, those were some staph infections outside the hospital).

And while I was trying to look up those articles, I came across this interesting one. It's about wounds, but I wonder if it would help if taken internally. I guess if we can't get antibiotics, we can stock up on honey.

Honey kills antibiotic-resistant bugs
Chronic wounds could benefit from traditional medicine.
19 November 2002
http://www.nature.com/nsu/021118/021118-1.html

[DoctorMichael]

Thanks for the update. Bump.

[El Gato]

patient is a medical doctor from Singapore who treated one of the earliest cases of SARS there between 3 and 9 Mar 2003. On 9 Mar 2003 he himself developed fever (39.4°C), myalgia and bone pain but did not have cough, dyspnoea or sore throat. Despite this, he flew to New York City to attend a medical meeting, accompanied by his wife who is also a doctor and by his mother-in-law.

Does this doctor work for Saddam Hussein? Is he a member of the Religion of Peace? The latter seems unlikely, Singapore has some of them, but not many. Still what is wrong with this guy, after a farily long term exposure to a patient with a fairly serious illness for which the causitive agent is unknown, travels to a medical convention on another contienent, thereby exposeing not just more people, but a whole bunch of doctors to it? If he doesn't work for SH, maybe he should.

[Future Useless Eater]

• He got on a plane in Singapore WITH A FEVER
• He arrived and went thru customs WITH A FEVER
• He was ALLOWED into this country WITH A FEVER

  What ever happened to the good-old Ellis Island days where we screened incoming foreigners and let in NOBODY who was sick?

  Entire families used to be turned away if just one family member was sick. That's how lots of Europeans ended up in South America.

  Now we waive everybody thru, give 'em free healthcare and move them to the TOP OF THE TRANSPLANT lists, just as long as they are foreigners.

[lilsparky]

Wonder about the other attendees at the medical meeting? Where are they and what's their status?

[CathyRyan]

3.18.03 UPDATE on ProMED-Mail


http://www.promedmail.org/pls/askus/f?p=2400:1001:149223503580919741::NO::F2400_P1001_BACK_PAGE,F2400_P1001_PUB_MAIL_ID:1000,21007