Twenty-First Century Plague: The Story of SARS

By Thomas Abraham

Book Overview

In the autumn of 2002 in southern China, a previously unknown virus jumped the species barrier from animal to man and sparked the first global epidemic of the new century. The disease sped along the air routes of a globalized world, spreading within months to thirty-one countries on every continent. Before it was reined in by a remarkable international scientific effort, the SARS virus demonstrated human society's vulnerability to disease. New infectious diseases like SARS have been emerging at an alarming rate over the past few decades. There is every indication the world will continue to face new viral diseases, some of them much more lethal and contagious than SARS. This book traces the emergence of SARS, in the process examining the global politics and economics of disease. It provides the first behind-the-scenes account of how the global battle against SARS was fought and the incredible research efforts that finally led to identification of the virus. patients, Thomas Abraham recounts the pressures and heartbreaks suffered by brave researchers who battled the clock to solve the SARS puzzle - even as colleagues and friends succumbed to the disease.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801881242
• ISBN13: 9780801881244
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 165 Pages
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A concise description of the epidemic

At 165 pages, the book is concise and to the point, laying out the human story of the SARS epidemic directly and forcefully. The book is organized temporally, and geographically, starting with the source of the infection in Guandong Province, China, and following up with a description of events in Hong Kong. The book describes well the milestone events of the epidemic, particularly the events in Hong Kong: the index patient, the Metropole Hotel, the toll on health care workers at the Prince of Wales Hospital, and the investigation of the spread of the disease at the Amoy Gardens apartments. The book describes the global spread of the disease and the decisive actions of the WHO that, in the end, may have saved many lives by getting information and warnings to the public, and organizing a large research team to find the organism. The deleterious actions of the Chinese government are described in an unbiased fashion. The race to find the organism is described in a compelling manner. The best recommmendation I have for the book, however, is that it is short, informative, and easy to read. The book is interesting, and takes only two or three hours to read.

Go dad

My dad wrote this and I read it i think its great its full of detail and intrestng tidbits even though this is adult lit i still loved it P.S my dad really did write this