ITALY: Carlo Urbani was dedicated to making healthcare available to the deprived. Paddy Agnew in Rome reports
The little village of Castelplanio, near Ancona on the Adriatic coast, will today turn out en masse for the funeral of Dr Carlo Urbani, the World Health Organisation officer who first identified the potentially fatal pneumonia SARS, a disease that has so far affected nearly 1,900 people in 18 countries, killing 63.
Castelplanio-born Dr Urbani, who himself died of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in a Bangkok hospital on Saturday, was an expert on communicable diseases. Based in Hanoi, Vietnam, he had previously worked in WHO public health programmes in Cambodia and Laos.
Not only Castelplanio but also family relatives have been surprised to find that 47-year-old Dr Urbani has posthumously become a minor international celebrity. Speaking on Monday, his sister Cristiana told reporters: "We didn't really understand how important his work was. To us, it just seemed normal".
"Normal" for Carlo Urbani meant a commitment to fighting disease in the developing world. A graduate of the University of Ancona, he had done research into malaria and medical parasitology, with special reference to the parasitic diseases that afflict children.
Some years ago he refused a senior post at Macerata hospital in southern Italy, preferring instead to work in Asia for the medical charity organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières. It was while working in Cambodia that he joined the WHO.
When the mystery SARS epidemic broke out in Hanoi, it was he who first identified the disease in an American businessman who had been admitted to a local hospital. According to the WHO, it was thanks to his early detection of the disease that new cases were identified and isolated, while global surveillance was immediately increased.
Dr Urbani leaves a wife, Giuliana, and three children. Speaking on her arrival back in Italy from Bangkok, to where her husband had been transferred from Hanoi in the vain hope of a cure, Signora Urbani told reporters: "We were frightened. We knew that he had been called to fight an epidemic. When it broke out, the hospital in Hanoi called on him to help out. He knew what he was risking. When I asked him for reassurances, he just told me, as he often did, that we must not be egotists but rather think about others".
In the last few days WHO officials have paid glowing tributes to Dr Urbani's work. Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, its Director-General, said that his life "reminds us of our true work in public health", while Ms Pascale Brudon, the WHO representative in Vietnam, commented: "Carlo was very much a doctor. His first goal was to help people. Carlo was the one who very quickly saw that this was something strange.
"When people became very concerned in the hospital, he was there every day, collecting samples, talking to the staff and strengthening infection control procedures".
The SARS virus, which is believed to have originated four months ago in China's Guangdong province, spread first to neighbouring countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam before hitting Canada, the US, Australia, Indonesia, Panama, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Rumania, Switzerland and, of course, Ireland.
Hong Kong has been especially badly hit, with 685 cases and 16 deaths. Furthermore, the Hong Kong authorities yesterday announced the evacuation of 200 residents from the Amoy Gardens housing complex to temporary isolation camps.
Carlo Urbani did not live long enough to win the battle against SARS, but he he did leave behind a vivid testimony as to why he had chosen to work in the developing world. In letters released by his family this week, he spoke of how it required just 20 US cents worth of medicine to save hundreds of thousands of children in the developing world from death through diarrhoea-induced dehydration.
In those same letters, he lamented the fact that only 0.3 per cent of pharmaceutical research in the last 20 years had been directed at tropical illnesses. In a note written three years ago, he concluded: "I grew up chasing a mirage, trying to put flesh on my dreams. That dream, of making healthcare freely available to the world's deprived has today become my job."