In a desperate bid to save Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) patients in Hong Kong, western medicine doctors in Hong Kong's hospitals have started conceding to allow patients to try traditional Chinese medicine to combine it with existing treatment.

Overwhelming support for using Chinese medicine to treat SARS patients came after both the program hosts, Hong Kong citizens, Chinese medicine herbalists and western medicine doctors all phoned in the HKSAR government radio show Thursday and Friday to voice their fervent support for public hospital doctors to adopt the combined treatment of traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine treatment.

This came particularly after members of the anti-SARS committee of Baptist University cited on air Friday recent successful clinical examples of speedy recovery of SARS patients in a week under the combined treatment of traditional Chinese medicine concoction and injection and western medicine at the Respiratory Ward of Guangdong Province Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital recently.

According to Ranic Leung Chun Chuen, a student representative member of the 9-person Anti-SARS committee urgently set up by the School of Chinese Medicine of Hong Kong Baptist University recently to fight for the use of Chinese medicine to treat SARS patients in Hong Kong, within one day after the opening of the university's two telephone hotlines Thursday, about 80 calls poured in a single day enquiring the use of Chinese medicine to cure SARS or for post-recovery health maintenance treatment.

Leung described the attitude of certain western medicine doctors at Hong Kong's public hospitals as already "conceding by giving the yellow ready signal if the green light yet" to allow their SARS patients to be treated by professional Chinese herbalists under the committee headed by Liu Liang, the dean of the School of Chinese medicine of Baptist University.

"We are trying to open up this avenue at public hospitals. So patients' relatives have already been calling us after this morning's show. So far, relatives of two patients have urgently contacted us. One is being treated at the intensive care unit while the other is less serious," Ranic Leung said.

Under the concessive circumstance now, Leung said that in the early to middle pathological phase of the contraction of the SARS virus, the committee's member experts are still confident of successful Chinese medicine treatment, if they are able to liaise with the public hospital doctors to agree on what combined prescriptions would be right to work together and to reinforce the treatment.

"Now if there are any obstacles at all, they would be the administrative obstacles. But if the patients themselves and their relatives now insist in trying Chinese medicine out, the hospital doctors theoretically have no rights to stop them.

"Indeed, the western doctors are softening their stance against Chinese medicine," he said, citing that the committee members are so busy visiting SARS patients all day that four extra helpers whoare retired doctors have been recruited to run around for the life of patients," Leung said.

But not until HKSAR Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa officially gives the official consent for allowing the combined use of two kinds of medicines will the administrative obstacles be removed, he said.

In order to cope with the situation, the anti-SARS committee of the Baptist University is currently setting up a contingency plan to meet the needs of SARS patients interested in combining current hospital treatment with Chinese medicine treatment.

The plan includes recruiting more voluntary medical experts, logistical support, the supply of protection gears for the front-line staff, quarantine measures, medical supplies, he said." The relative smaller-scale contingency plan being mapped out would be escalated into a major operation once the public hospitals here are willing to officially incorporate Chinese medicine in treating the SARS patients," he said.

Liu Liang said that (852) 3411-2905 or (852) 3411-2998 is the number to call, should the public need to seek quick advice from the School of Medicine of the university here over the telephone.

(Xinhua News Agency April 19, 2003)