A doctor whose suspicions about two Queens hospital patients suffering from sudden paralysis led to the discovery of first outbreak in western hemisphere has died at the age of 59.

Dr. Asnis, infectious disease specialist, contacted Marcelle Layton, the chief epidemiologist at the New York City health department, on August 23, 1999, reporting that two of her patients at Flushing Hospital Medical Center were displaying similar puzzling symptoms.

Elinor Levy and Mark Fischetti in their book, “The New Killer Diseases: How the Alarming Evolution of Germs Threatens Us All”, wrote that Dr. Asnis did something that other doctors would never have bothered to do.

They mentioned that the worst problems with our disease-detection system is that many doctors never report cases of strange symptoms, either because they are not sure of the disease or they are ignorant of the reporting requirement, or simply they have never got around to it.

But they said Dr. Asnis was highly diligent. Dr. Layton urged Dr. Asnis to send blood and spinal fluid samples to the State Health Department’s laboratory in Albany for further testing. Slowly the hospital had eight patients with similar symptoms.

On Sept. 27, 1999, further tests by Dr. Duane J. Gubler, a C.D.C. expert on arborviruses, coupled with earlier suspicious deaths of birds in the Bronx, prompted the federal government to revise its diagnosis to West Nile virus.

Deborah Susan Asnis was born in New Hyde Park, on Long Island, on July 17, 1956. She graduated from Northwestern University and from its medical school in 1981. She was director of infectious disease at Flushing Hospital Medical Center and a clinical researcher in HIV infection.