HEALTH & SCIENCE

American doctor volunteers to fight SARS in Toronto

The epidemiologist says the experience in Canada made her better prepared if this or some other emerging communicable disease strikes closer to home.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. July 21, 2003.

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome in Canada and Asia in March caused worldwide panic. Conferences changed venues. Travelers cancelled their plans.

But when a Canadian doctor attending the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America meeting in May made a plea for help to those in attendance, Tobi Karchmer, MD, jumped at the chance. Dr. Karchmer, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and a hospital epidemiologist at North Carolina Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, now says she learned a lot about what would have to be done here if SARS strikes.

Question: Why did you go to Toronto when everyone else was avoiding it?

Answer: It was an amazing opportunity to learn from what was going on in Toronto -- what a SARS outbreak meant to hospitals, health care systems, hospital epidemiologists and infection control.

It was also important to bring information back that might be important for us to use when we see SARS or other emerging communicable diseases.

Q: What was the hospital like when you arrived?

A: The first day we went in, we were on a list of people to be allowed in. You had your temperature taken as you came in the door. You also had to fill out a screening tool to look at your potential risk.

It really was an incredible effort. [There was] limited access. One entrance in. One way out. One for staff. One for visitors. Everybody coming in got screened. Everybody got a mask.

[...]

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