AFTER the Great War, a lethal flu bug came along and kills many many millions - 18 to 20 millions is a figure I have seen on a number of occasions – the death toll from that flu was more than the actual casualties of the war.

Currently there is a killer virus doing the rounds that is causing concern. It is known as SARS – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. It started in China but has leap-frogged all over the world in recent days.

The outbreak, which caused its first fatality last November, has been kept very hush hush by the Chinese. It was only at the end of March that they let it be known that there was a disease in their midst.

And people are still being kept in the dark. A state-controlled newspaper only mentioned the outbreak in three paragraphs tucked away on an inside page. Although the Rolling Stones concerts in China have been cancelled on account of the epidemic, no one has been told the reason. Nothing new there, though.

Now, after months of hiding their SARS outbreak, at long last the leaders out there seem to have got the message. Last week they started a highly publicised campaign to halt the spread of this deadly virus which claimed a record nine deaths in a day in Hong Kong on April 14. Adversity of all kinds have their heroes as well and the SARS outbreak is no exception. Here the hero is Dr. Carlo Urbani who was the first to identify the SARS outbreak as an epidemic and was killed by the virus.

The Times in its obituary of Dr. Urban states:

"Carlo Urbani was the first World Health Organisation (WHO) officer to identify the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). It was he who alerted the world last month to an outbreak of a disease that causes a form of viral pneumonia that cannot be treated, with antibiotics. "It has taken more than a hundred lives since emerging in southern China last November.

Urbani was living with his wife and three young children in Hanoi, where he moved in 1998 to work for the WHO, advising on the control of communicable diseases. "He worried that SARS was a danger to healthcare workers and told the WHO that precautions were needed to prevent them from being infected. His detection of SARS meant that many new cases were identified and isolated.

The disease had been carried to Vietnam by a Chinese-American businessman named Chen travelling from Hong Kong, who is believed to have contracted it when he stayed in the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong".

It is thought that a Chinese professor, who had been treating patients in Guangdong, southern China, infected several guests in the hotel, and that they have since spread the disease to several countries.

Urbani first saw Chen on February 28, two days after he had been admitted to a hospital in Hanoi. Even when the situation was becoming dangerous, Urbani was at the hospital every day, collecting samples and tracing the paths of infection.

Eventually, he contracted the disease himself. Carlo Urbani was born in Castleplanio, near Ancona, and took a medical degree at the University of Ancona.

At the age of 22 he left to work in Africa, where he carried out postgraduate work in malaria and medical parasitology and was an expert in helminth infections. Dr. Urbani did a lot of work out in Africa including a series of missions for the WHO. He made a name for himself out there in the Dark Continent.

After he returned to Italy, Urbani was appointed president of Médecins Sans Frontiéres in Italy, an appointment that demonstrated his leadership and management skills.

In 1999 he helped to accept the Nobel Peace Prize for the humanitarian group.

It has been suggested that the disease that he identified as an epidemic be named after him. He is survived by his wife and three children.

Alistair Cooke in his letter from America last week felt strongly that Dr. Urbani should be posthumously awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize for Medicine and I’d go along with Cooke.

I hope the judges in Sweden will have the vision to see it that way.