LettersHong Kong doctors took the lead in Sars battle: where has that fighting spirit gone?

Faced with an unknown disease in 2003, doctors rose to the challenge, crossing the border to gather samples before stopping the epidemic. But now, we see health workers risking patients’ well-being to press their demands to block border crossings

2-MIN READ2-MIN

Members of the newly formed Hospital Authority Employees Alliance and other medical personnel hold placards during a strike at the Hospital Authority building in Hong Kong on February 7. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:00am, 13 Feb 2020Updated: 7:00am, 13 Feb 2020

I read with dismay the letter from Dr George Chan of Auckland, “Doctors do not take an oath of martyrdom” (February 8), in which he quoted excerpts of the Hippocratic oath to contend, rightly, that doctors do not take an oath of martyrdom.

But imagine I’m your doctor looking after you, a Covid-19 patient, and I turn my back on you, leaving you in the care of other colleagues, because I don’t want to be a martyr. This would be totally wrong.

No doctor wants to or should be a martyr. As a doctor, I will treat you like any other patient to the best of my knowledge, which includes the basic principles of managing a highly infectious disease (that is, ensuring I neither become infected nor spread the disease). Any trained doctor should be able to do this with reasonable confidence.

In the time of Sars, the outbreak ended after the virus was brought under control in Queen Mary Hospital, where Prof Rosie Young, my teacher, used to work and whose co-authored letter Dr Chan referred to.

The senior professors, faced with a deadly and unknown infectious disease, strode up to the front line themselves, knowing full well that sending younger, less experienced, doctors to the front line would be akin to sending them into a death trap.

Dr Guan Yi, a microbiologist, went to the Sars zone in China to gather samples and brought them back to Hong Kong, before a microbiology team led by Prof Malik Peiris and Prof K.Y. Yuen unravelled the genetic mystery behind Sars, thereby tracing the animal source of the virus and eventually stopping the epidemic. My salute to all these true heroes.