Healthcare workers most vulnerable to infections

THE deadliest outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has often centred around hospitals, with medical staff, visitors and other patients being the most vulnerable to getting infected.  

One of the first indicators of an unknown epidemic was when unusually high numbers of healthcare workers started falling ill in hospitals. By March, a patient with symptoms of atypical pneumonia, later to be called Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), had infected 35 medical staff at the French Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam. Four died.