HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The World Health Organisation yesterday issued a rare emergency travel advisory on fears that a mysterious form of pneumonia that has recently killed three people and hospitalised scores others is spreading beyond Asia.

Most of the outbreaks of the highly contagious illness were reported last week in Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam.

Health officials reported that two Canadians, who recently arrived from Hong Kong, died in Toronto and four of their relatives have been hospitalised. Meanwhile, a doctor who treated a patient with the illness in Singapore had to be taken off a trans-Atlantic flight yesterday during a stopover in Germany and was hospitalised.

The Geneva-based WHO said in the past week it has received more than 150 reports worldwide of the atypical pneumonia, which it called acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

“SARS is now a worldwide health threat,” Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO’s director-general, said in a statement issued in Geneva. “The world needs to work together to find its cause, cure the sick, and stop its spread.”

The advisory said there was no reason to restrict travel but urged people to seek medical attention if they have travelled to infected areas and have shown symptoms of the illness, which include coughing, high fever and shortness of breath.

It also recommended that patients believed to have the illness be isolated to prevent it from spreading further.

Dick Thompson, a WHO spokesman in Geneva, could recall no such emergency travel advisory being issued in recent memory.

“Until we can get a grip on it, I don’t see how it will slow down,” said Thompson. “People are not responding to antibiotics and antivirals, it’s a highly contagious disease and it’s moving around by jet. It’s bad.”

In southern China’s Guangdong province, a mystery illness has, in recent months, killed five people and sickened more than 300 with pneumonia. The public health bureau there had no comment yesterday and it was not clear if the illness was the same as the current outbreaks reported elsewhere in Asia.

A team of epidemiologists from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam, yesterday to investigate the outbreak there. A separate team of French doctors are expected to bring medicine and respirators.

Samples were rushed from Hanoi to Atlanta and will be tested immediately to try to determine the cause, said Dave Daigle, a centre spokesman.

The Hanoi outbreak started after an American businessman travelling from Shanghai via Hong Kong apparently infected up to 31 hospital workers, four of whom are listed in critical condition, including a French doctor. The American was evacuated and died in Hong Kong.

At least 11 more people were admitted to another hospital in the city after coming down with the same flu-like symptoms, officials said yesterday.

In Canada, Toronto Public Health officials said that Sui-chu Kwan died March 5 and her adult son, Chi Kwai Tse, 44, died March 13 after arriving recently from Hong Kong. Four other family members are in Toronto hospitals, officials said.

The pneumonia might have also emerged in British Columbia, where one person was in intensive care at a Vancouver hospital and another person has recovered, Toronto health officials said late Friday night.

Health officials have set up a hot line in Toronto for people who fear they have the illness.

A doctor from Singapore believed infected with atypical pneumonia was taken off an airplane flying from New York to Singapore and was quarantined in a Frankfurt hospital, German health authorities said. Two other people accompanying the doctor were also taken off the flight.

A Singapore health ministry spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity that the doctor had treated an infected patient in Singapore before travelling to New York. The doctor is believed to be the first person in Europe to be infected with the disease.

Another 155 passengers on the airplane who were transiting through Frankfurt were temporarily held in quarantine at the airport or sent home and told to remain there, German authorities said.

Singapore reported 16 infections and Taipei three. A man from The Philippines who visited Vietnam earlier this month also has been diagnosed with atypical pneumonia.

In Hong Kong, officials yesterday said eight more hospital workers have come down with pneumonia, bringing the total number there to 37. Two patients were listed in serious condition.

Hong Kong officials, however, say the disease has not spread and that travel to the city is safe.