The World Health Organisation said on Saturday the global outbreak of the respiratory illness SARS had been contained as it removed Taiwan from its list of areas with recent local transmission of the disease.

"We do not mark the end of SARS today, but we observe a milestone -- the global SARS outbreak has been contained," WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland said in a statement.

The announcement came after Taiwan, the last area on the list, had gone the mandatory 20 days or twice the normal incubation period without reporting a new case of the potentially fatal respiratory sickness.

However, the WHO warned countries they must remain vigilant to the re-emergence of the disease for which there is no simple treatment and which has killed more than 800 people worldwide since it appeared in southern China last November.

(China Daily July 5, 2003)