Sars is a Disease

Added: 05/25/2007

There are many diseases that are in medical books. There are also many viruses in doctor's medical books. However, just because there are many diseases and viruses in doctor's medical books, that doesn't mean that society is familiar with all of them. Society is very familiar with both the common cold and the flu, but, we are less familiar was Sars.

There are many different viruses, bacteria, and diseases that doctors are very familiar with and therefore, they can both diagnose and treat them effectively. Society is familiar with the common cold and the flu. This is probably due to the fact that many and most people have had colds and the flu many times in their lives. In fact, it is claimed that most people come down with at least two colds a year. In addition, many people do experience flu or flu like symptoms during the winter months of October, November, December, January, and February. Even though society is very familiar with the ailments of the common cold and the flu, which is fully known as influenza, most of society isn’t familiar at all with the respiratory disease called Sars. We might have knowledge that Sars is an ailment but we are not sure of what causes Sars. What is Sars and what are this ailment’s symptoms? Well, let’s find out, shall we?

Severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, is a respiratory disease in humans which is caused by the Sars coronavirsus. There has been one major epidemic of Sars that took place between November 2002 and July 2003, with 8,095 known cases of the disease and there were 774 deaths from Sars. The epidemic of Yellow Pneumonia appears to have originated in the Guangdong province of China in November 2002. The first case of Sars was supposedly originated from a rural area in Forshan, Guangdong in November 2002, and the patient who was a farmer was treated at the First People’s Hospital of Forshan. Nobody was certain that Sars was a serious disease at the time. The farmer and patient died soon after he was diagnosed with Sars but no definite diagnosis was made upon his death.

The Sars epidemic reached the public spotlight in February 2003, when an American businessman traveling from China becomes affected with pneumonia like symptoms while on a flight to Singapore. The plane stopped in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the victim died in a hospital. Many of the hospital staff who treated him developed the same disease despite basic hospital procedures. The severity of the symptoms and of the infection caused to the hospital staff alarmed global health authorities. This was because they were fearful of another emergent pneumonia epidemic. On March 12th, 2003, the World Health Organization issued a global alert and a health alert by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Hong Kong, the first groups of affected people were discharged from the hospital on March 29th 2003. The disease spread in Hong Kong from a mainland on the ninth floor of the Metropole Hotel in the Kowloon Peninsula, which affected sixteen people in the hotel.

The initial symptoms of Sars are influenza like and may include fever, malign, tiredness, gastrointestinal symptoms, cough, sore throat, and other non specific symptoms. The only system that is common to all patients appears to be a fever above 104 degrees Fahrenheit. A shortness of breath may occur later. Symptoms of Sars usually appear two to ten days following exposure.

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