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Monday, May 05, 2003Here is how SARS the acronym came about. Three worried officials of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, needed a name for a virus causing sudden deaths in China. The three were Denis Aitken, deputy director general; David Heymann, director of the Communicable Diseases Section; and Richard Thompson, its communications officer. (Presumably, he answers the phone with ''Communicable communications here.'') ''We wanted a name that would not stigmatize a location,'' Thompson says, ''such as 'the Hanoi Disease.' We first thought of A.P.W.D., or Atypical Pneumonia Without Diagnosis, and I'm glad we dropped that. Then we simply described the disease in another way, and it was in front of us -- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, SARS.'' But what did they see as the difference between severe and acute? ''I asked this question, too, when we came up with the name. In medicine, severe is 'grave' and acute means 'suddenly.' This respiratory syndrome caused great harm (severe) and had a rapid onset (acute). Later, when we had conclusive evidence that a new coronavirus is the cause of the disease, we named it the SARS virus.'' posted by Sydney on 5/05/2003 08:15:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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