A decade on from Sars: Torment of the first patient
In the second of our two-part series marking the 10th anniversary of Sars, the outbreak's first victim recalls its lingering after-effects
While most people's memories of the 2002-03 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome - which killed 774 people worldwide - are fading, people like Huang Xingchu are still living with its legacy every day.
Huang, a native of Heyuan in Guangdong, was the first person to be diagnosed with what was then thought to be typical pneumonia. Now he is desperate to move on.
The 46-year-old told the South China Morning Post that all he wanted was to disappear from view and run his small restaurant in Heyuan's Linjiang township.
"I have avoided approaching most old friends and workmates I knew for years. And I seldom even go back to my hometown, the village where I grew up," he says. "I just don't want to bring up the matter of the past. I would like to do everything to let the world just forget me."
Much work since the outbreak has focused on finding the real source of Sars. It is believed to have started in bats and spread to humans through the consumption of civet cats.
But Huang was vilified when it was revealed he had been the first human patient to be diagnosed with the disease.
"I was not the origin of Sars, I was a victim," he said. "I have no idea when and where I contracted the illness."