Dr. Donald Low, public face of Toronto SARS crisis, dies

Dr. Donald Low, a leading Canadian infectious disease expert who rose to prominence while helping Toronto cope with the SARS crisis that killed hundreds worldwide a decade ago, has died at age 68 after being diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Low was the microbiologist inchief at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital and a professor at the University of Toronto.

It's a big loss to all of us in microbiology.- Allison McGeer, Mount Sinai Hospital

After the 2003 breakout ofsevere acute respiratory syndrome in Toronto, Low oversawregular updates to the public about the syndrome, whicheventually killed 44 people in Canada and nearly 800 worldwide.

Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infectious disease control at MountSinai hospital, worked with Low and knew him for 25 years.

In an interview on CBC Radio's Metro Morning shortly after news of his death broke, McGeer said Low provided a voice of calm to a city gripped by fear during the SARS outbreak.

"He was the face and a good piece of the brains behind our response to SARS," McGeer told host Matt Galloway. "What many of us in Toronto don't recognize is the loss he leaves behind to microbiology and infectious diseases in Canada, and to all of his research work in emerging diseases around the world. It's a big loss to all of us in microbiology.

"With Don, no problem is ever too large," said McGeer. "You simply lay it out, you put it in its pieces, you figure out how to deal with it and you move on. That may be his biggest legacy."

Dr. Michael Gardam, from the University Health Network, told CBC News that Low's commitment to keeping the public informed during the outbreak was a unique trait.

"The thought youwould have a world renowned expert reallyseeing it as one of his major jobs to go directly to the public and actually talk about what's going on I can't tell youhow unusual that is," he said.

Low diedWednesday evening after battling a brain tumour. "As a husband and a father nobody better," his wife, Maureen Taylor, told CBC News. "His kids adore him and he was everything to me."

'Best boss you could imagine'

McGeer credits Low for his role in not only studying infectious diseases, but also in teaching other doctors in the field.

"He created the generation of people that we now count on to study antimicrobial resistance and emerging infectious diseases," she said.

"One of the standing jokes in microbiology at MountSinai was that nobody ever leaves. There was no temptation. He was the best boss you could imagine."

According to Mount Sinai's website,Low wasa fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Hecompleted his undergraduate training and postgraduate training in medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba and his training in medical microbiology at the University of Toronto.

Low's primary research interests werein the study of the epidemiology and the mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance in community and hospital pathogens.

Lowpublished more than 385 papers in peer-reviewed journals and wasa reviewer for several organizations including the Medical Research Council, Health Canada, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of American Medical Association, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and had been cited some 3600 times.