The World Health Organisation on Saturday issued a rare emergency advisory cautioning travellers and airline employees to be on the alert for a severe form of pneumonia that has killed at least nine people and hospitalised hundreds of others, particularly in the Far East.The advisory did not call for a halt in travel, but warned travellers to be alert for symptoms of the disease and to seek treatment immediately if they become apparent. ‘‘We want people to be aware that if they have symptoms, they should go to a doctor,’’ said WHO’s Christine McNab.WHO said it has detected 150 new cases of the disease — which it is calling severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS — and expressed alarm at the speed with which it is spreading. Two deaths and several cases of SARS were reported in Canada last week, and on Saturday, a Singaporean physician travelling from New York was hospitalised in Frankfurt, Germany, after falling ill on his flight.Others on the flight were quarantined in Germany. Late on Saturday, it was reported that another traveller, returning from Asia, had fallen ill aboard a flight from Atlanta to Canada. ‘‘SARS is now a worldwide health threat,’’ said Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO’s director general. Officials stressed that there is no evidence linking the outbreak to terrorism.‘‘The emergence of two clusters of this illness on the North American continent indicates the potential for travellers who have been in the affected areas of Asia to have been exposed to this syndrome,’’ said Dr. Julie Gerberding, CDC director. ‘‘Therefore, we are instituting measures aimed at identifying potential cases among travellers returning to the US and protecting people with whom they may have come in contact.’’Both WHO and CDC have sent teams of disease experts and other physicians to southeast Asia to help identify the cause of the outbreak and to assist in control efforts. The agencies are also sending masks, gowns, gloves, goggles and other hospital equipment to medical facilities to help break the transmission chain. (LATWP)
