SARS expert Aileen Plant, 52, died from natural causes while in the Jakarta International Airport on Tuesday, according to Australian media sources.

Plant is well-known in Vietnam for helping the Vietnamese Ministry of Health stop a 2003 out­break of Severe Acute Res­piratory Syndrome at the Viet Phap (Vietnam-France) Hospital in Hanoi.

The fatal chest infection had spread from patients to doctors and hospital staff before the virus could be contained.

The professor, leading a team from the World Health Organization, took over monitoring responsibilities when Dr Carlo Urbani con­tracted SARS and eventu­ally died.

The SARS outbreak killed five people and in­fected some 63 others in Viet Nam before spreading internationally to dozens of countries around the world. SARS shares many symptoms with the com­mon flu including fever, coughing and trouble breathing.

Plant was in Indonesia attending a WHO confer­ence at the time of her death. A renowned epidemi­ologist and professor at Curtin University of Tech­nology in Perth, Australia, she was considered one of the leading experts on in­fectious diseases like bird flu in the world.

Source: Viet Nam News; www.thanhniennews.com