News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A new set of journal articles related to the 10th anniversary of the SARS epidemic in 2003 says the episode did much to boost recognition of the need for coordinated international and national responses to emerging infectious diseases.

(CIDRAP News) – In the history of infectious diseases, coincidence plays an extraordinary role. In 1706, Cotton Mather purchased a slave named Onesimus who happened to come from a tribe that practiced variolation, and so smallpox prevention was introduced to North America.

(CIDRAP News) – The strain of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) that erupted from obscurity to kill 774 people worldwide has gone quiet, at least for now. Yet its lessons will keep benefiting people even if it never reappears.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) today lifted its recommendation against travel to Hong Kong and China's Guangdong province, signaling that the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak is declining in its original strongholds.

Both places have fewer than 60 patients who are still infectious, and the average number of new cases per day has hovered at less than five in recent days, WHO officials said in a news release.