Carlo Urbani

Who was Carlo Urbani?

Carlo Urbani was an Italian physician and the first to identify severe acute respiratory syndrome as a new and dangerously contagious disease. Although he became infected and died, his early warning to the World Health Organization touched off a massive response that probably helped save the lives of millions of people around the world.

In late February 2003, Urbani was called into The French Hospital of Hanoi to look at patient Johnny Chen, an American businessman who had fallen ill with what doctors thought was a bad case of influenza. Urbani realized that Chen did not have flu, but probably a new and highly contagious disease. He immediately notified the WHO, triggering the most effective response to a major epidemic in history. He also persuaded the Vietnamese Health Ministry to begin isolating patients and screening travelers, thus slowing the early pace of the epidemic.

Due to the work he did in Hanoi treating SARS infected patients, Dr. Urbani became infected with the virus himself. On March 11, as he flew from Hanoi to a conference in Bangkok, Thailand where he was to talk on the subject of childhood parasites, Urbani started feeling feverish on the plane.