Ali Mohamed Zaki is an Egyptian

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

and

virologist Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, their ...

known for first discovering the

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory infection caused by ''Middle East respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus'' (MERS-CoV). Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. Typical symptoms include fever, cough, ...

virus while working at the

Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital Doctor is an academic title that originates from the Latin word of the same spelling and meaning. The word is originally an agentive noun of the Latin verb 'to teach'. It has been used as an academic title in Europe since the 13th century, w ...

, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He isolated the virus from the lungs of a patient admitted to the hospital with severe viral pneumonia of unknown aetiology. Soon after Zaki posted an alert on proMED, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health pressured the hospital to sever his contract, and he returned to Egypt under fear of reprisal. The sequence was then characterised and named by

Ron Fouchier Ronaldus (Ron) Adrianus Maria Fouchier (born 13 October 1966) is a Dutch virologist who is Deputy head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, headed by Prof. Marion Koopmans. Notability Fouchier is notable for his research on respiratory vir ...

and his team Erasmus MC as MERS.

Publications

* Isolation of a novel coronavirus from a man with pneumonia in Saudi Arabia

References

Living people Egyptian physicians Egyptian virologists Middle East respiratory syndrome Year of birth missing (living people) {{Egypt-med-bio-stub