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To: TobagoJack who wrote (32125)	4/22/2003 9:39:24 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

The necessary war fought against the odds by real heros ... Wednesday, April 23, 2003 The height of Guangdong's pneumonia crisis was a blur for medics china.scmp.com LEU SIEW YING in Guangzhou For Zhong Jiaxi, who practises in Chinese medicine, the height of the Sars epidemic in Guangdong in February passed as a blur, such was the volume of patients. Dr Zhong, who teaches at the Guangdong Chinese medicine hospital, cannot remember the date he saw his first patient with severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), but thinks it was in October or November. The Guangdong Health Department said the first reported case was on November 16, but no-one knows for sure if that is the case. "I was called in to treat the man because he was not responding to Western medicine," he said. "We realised it was a new illness but .?? it was only in February that we all agreed it was atypical pneumonia. "We began seeing more patients at the end of the year. Around the time of the Spring Festival, the number of cases ballooned. I went back to my home town for a short break and was called back to work on the third day. "It's like a war. A soldier has no time to think about being afraid when he is fighting. Afterwards, when he recollects the events, the fear sets in," said Dr Zhong. He said he was not particularly afraid because despite the panic that set in around the world, he remained on high alert. At one time, frontline medical workers were working around the clock. "You're so tired, you want to just plump down on a chair and not move, but a doctor's responsibility is to save lives and not worry about contracting diseases," he said. "At that time, my priority was to save lives. I didn't think about collecting data for research purposes." The Guangdong Infectious Diseases Hospital, one of the hospitals that treated a high number of cases, said that at the height of the epidemic on February 13, 150 patients were admitted at a time when many of its medical workers were falling ill. The Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine's Ersha Island branch treated 110 patients. It is not known what the success rate is but World Health Organisation expert James Macguire, who visited Guangdong this month, said Chinese medicine has been effective in bringing down fever. Chinese medical practitioners use a mixture of herbs, Western medicine and medical equipment such as respirators to treat the illness, Dr Zhong said. "I can't tell you exactly what herbs I use because I prescribe different herbs in different dosages for different patients. Even for the same patient, I would prescribe different herbs and change the dosage at different stages of the illness," he said.