Carlo Urbani

Urbani tied the wedding knot with Giullani Chiorrini. The couple had three children.

In February 2003, Urbani was asked to treat an American patient at the French Hospital of Hanoi. Doctors thought the patient was suffering from pneumonia. After examination Urbani perceived that the patient was the victim of a highly infectious disease.

Besides informing WHO about it, he also approached the Health Ministry of Vietnam to take proper measures. Hospital workers were advised to use high filter masks and double gown and most importantly, to isolate patients.

Carlo Urbani was born on October 19, 1956, in Castelplanio, Italy, into a middle class family with a strong Catholic background. His father was a teacher at the Ancona Commercial Navy Institute and his mother was a headmistress of a primary school.

Urbani graduated in medicine from the University of Ancona in 1981. He then specialized in infectious and tropical diseases from the University of Messina and earned a postgraduate degree in tropical parasitology in 1984.

After completing his studies, Urbani continued his work at the university.

He was interested in tackling the challenges of international health. In the late 1980s, he visited Mauritania several times with a group of volunteers to support its ministry of health in parasitic disease control.

In 1990, he joined the Macerata hospital. While at Macerata, Urbani got in touch with WHO, and from 1993 began working with it on temporary assignments in the Maldives, Mauritania and Guinea.

In 1995, he went to Maldives to track the epidemiology of the hookworm (a serious intestinal infection) and to train laboratory technicians to test for worms.

It was Urbani who for the first time documented the transmission of Schistosoma mansoni. More than 200 million people across the world were affected by this infection.

Carlo Urbani was the first WHO officer to identify the outbreak of the deadly SARS disease while diagnosing a patient other doctors had failed to diagnose properly. He immediately recognized that he was dealing with a highly contagious disease and helped the WHO in responding quickly to the major epidemic.