SARS sleuth: CK Lee

“Exciting” is how Chin-kei Lee describes his work as an epidemiologist. So exciting, in fact, that he has not unpacked his suitcase since returning to Australia from Beijing in January.

“The World Health Organisation could ask me to be at the airport to return to China at any time of the day or night, so I have saved packing time by not unpacking,” he says.

Dr Lee (right), 40, is an Alumnus of the ANU Masters in Applied Epidemiology (MAE) program. He completed his undergraduate degree in Medicine in Hong Kong, where he was born, then took up a Masters in Public Health at the University of Sydney, before enrolling in the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health’s MAE program — “a unique opportunity to do fieldwork and apply myself practically, as well as academically”.

Cantonese-speaking Dr Lee was an integral part of the response to the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak. Based at Hong Kong’s Prince of Wales Hospital, his role was to track the spread of the disease, its symptoms and to help craft a response strategy to prevent its spread.

“I was one member of a team working around the clock during the SARS outbreak — we would hear about new cases overnight and immediately start trying to find where and how this person contracted it.”

Both SARS and Avian Flu have been caused by mutations of the Influenza virus. This means traits of the infection — such as transmission patterns, symptoms and incubation periods — may change between mutations and need to be monitored.

Although most of us would be reluctant to travel to the hotspots of infectious disease,Dr Lee says he does not get nervous about potentially contracting a lethal virus, but “excited, yes — it is a little like being a detective”.

“I am not usually right where people have contracted the disease, although when I went to mainland China during the SARS outbreak, I did do field trips to the southern provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Shanxi [where people were infected], with Chinese health officials.

“More often I am in the office monitoring and advising health authorities — the local health care people such as doctors and nurses are more at risk than us epidemiologists, especially in the early stages of an outbreak.”

Since the containment of SARS in mid-2003, Dr Lee has continued his contract with the World Health Organization (WHO), his work focusing on rumour surveillance, summarising the outbreak and training field epidemiologists. He was also back in Guangdong in November following a new SARS case.

It is likely he will be part of the Avian Flu response team when he is called to Beijing by WHO, but he says containment of this flu strain should be more manageable than SARS, which took the world by surprise.

“We also learnt much from the SARS outbreak last year, and our response has begun much earlier,” Dr Lee says.

“However, it is still a very serious situation.”

It seems there are plenty of exciting times ahead for Dr Lee.