Doctors on alert after probable SARS death in Africa

COUNTRIES around Africa yesterday stepped up their vigilance against SARS after the continent’s first probable victim of the virus died in South Africa.

Hospitals and medical staff in Africa are already under enormous strain as a result of rampant malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis and cholera, but many countries have put hospitals on stand-by and set up isolation wards for any suspected case of the illness, for which there is as yet neither a cure nor a preventive vaccine.

A 62-year-old South African man died in Pretoria on Tuesday of cardiac complications, the South African government announced.