Public Health Agencies’ Quick Response To SARS Due To Lessons Learned From Emergence of AIDS
The New York Times today examines how lessons learned during the beginning of the AIDS pandemic have helped public health agencies respond quickly to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Just as the viruses that cause AIDS and SARS attack the body in different ways -- people with HIV take about 10 years to develop symptoms, while people with the virus linked to SARS develop symptoms in about two to 10 days -- public health officials have shown "striking differences" in the way they reacted to the two diseases, according to the Times. Agencies and scientists around the world have improved communication, research cooperation and disease detection and tracking systems since the emergence of AIDS 22 years ago. "If anything positive can be said of AIDS, it is that it awakened the world to the global resurgence of infectious diseases and sharpened the focus on the threat of new and emerging ones," according to the Times (Altman, New York Times, 5/6). The complete article is available online.
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