What Kind Of A Disease Is SARS?

SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and it is a disease that has only emerged very recently, in the last 20 years. It first appeared in 1993 when people in China and other parts of south east Asia began to die of a severe pneumonia that could not be identified. It was caused by a previously unknown virus and was called SARS.

Many people who got SARS died and there was panic for a time, when doctors thought that a pandemic might start and the disease could spread throughout the world very quickly.

Thankfully, this didn't happen but SARS outbreaks did occur in many different countries, carried by people travelling. In the next ten years, a vaccine was developed and now, since 2003, the disease has been kept largely under control, although there are still out breaks during the late winter and early spring of most years.