I. Anaesthesia and SARS

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Abstract
The epicentre of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in North America was Toronto in Canada. The outbreak brought the healthcare system of the city to a standstill for 4 weeks. Health authorities placed 8000 people in quarantine. Two hundred and sixty‐seven people with suspected or probable SARS were admitted to 17 different hospitals. Twenty‐one deaths have occurred at the time of writing. Over half of those infected have been frontline healthcare workers, including three anaesthetists and one intensivist.1 As specialists in airway management, anaesthetists are routinely exposed to patients’ respiratory secretions and are at high risk of contracting SARS from infected patients. This editorial provides suggestions on how to minimize this risk by improved infection control.