While I covered the SARS outbreak from Hong Kong, officials from the World Health Organization repeatedly emphasized the importance of early reports about a disease outbreak in order to track it back to the source. (I wrote one story about a woman working for the WHO whose sole job was to chase rumors of new SARS outbreaks!)
Clearly, confirmation would need to come from a scientific source, but could blogs offer a new way to track disease?
The question is asked by Thomas Crampton on the International Herald Tribune site. Thanks to Pablo Halkyard for the link.
