Asia's health workers are rapidly becoming to SARS what New York's firefighters were to September 11 -- revered as heroic front-line troops prepared to risk their lives in the name of serving the public.

Doctors and nurses have shown a compassion and single-minded devotion to caring for victims struck down by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which has touched the hearts of millions of Asians.

While loved ones were warned against visiting patients to avoid becoming infected with the disease that has killed 435 people and infected more than 6,000 worldwide since erupting in China last November, medics have courageously stuck to their task of caring for the sick.

As a result, hundreds of doctors and nurses have themselves been struck down and at least seven have died from the pneumonialike illness which has no cure or vaccine.

Despite the deaths and the imminent risks to their own health,

doctors and nurses continue to labour tirelessly at hospitals.

Their dedication and bravery has drawn comparisons to New York firefighters who marched into the smoking twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, after terrorists turned

passenger aircraft into flying bombs and levelled the buildings, in a bid to save the lives of trapped civilians while fully aware they may not emerge with their own.

Peter Cameron, an Australian doctor who heads the emergency ward at Hong Kong's Prince of Wales Hospital -- where some of the territory's first SARS cases were recorded -- said his staff's dedication was incredible.

"It was incredible to see staff turning up to work each day despite the fact that, in the first two weeks of this experience, each day four or five more staff members would succumb to the illness."

The firefighters were acclaimed heroes, and governments and the public are granting the same status to brave medical workers who have succumbed to SARS while caring for patients.