Ye Xin passed away wearing a white nurse's robe.
"She would be happy if she knew she went away dressed in her
favourite suit," said grief-stricken husband Zhang Shen.
Ye, the 47-year-old head nurse of the Emergency Treatment
Department with the Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese
Medicine, died on March 25 after contracting SARS when treating
patients with the virus.
Ye's death was a huge loss to her family and to staff at the
hospital who remember her as a dedicated and selfless "angel in
white."
That dedication and selflessness were clear for all to see each
time a crisis arose at the hospital, where SARS patients were being
treated. Ye would tell her younger colleagues: "This is dangerous,
let me do it."
In
early February, the hospital saw a sudden influx of patients with a
flu-like illness - later to become known as SARS.
With the sudden increase in workload, Ye was the first on the
emergency ward to volunteer to work overtime. Engrossed in her
work, Ye sometimes refused to answer phone calls from home,
recalled her colleagues.
"She knew the danger of the virus," recalled husband Zhang Shen.
"She cancelled all family gatherings with our parents the weekend
after she began to fight SARS at the frontline."
As
head nurse, Ye never hesitated to undertake all risky tasks - most
of which brought her into contact with patients' excrement.
She told junior nurses: "You are still young, this is too dangerous
for you."
She also prepared vitamin pills for her co-workers every morning
and repeatedly reminded them to take precautionary measures in
their battle against the disease.
Ye
found herself in pain all over her body with a slight fever on
March 4 and was immediately put under observation and treated in
the ward where she had worked for the past 27 years. She was later
confirmed as having contracted SARS.
No
one could figure out exactly how and when she became infected
because she had joined in so many emergency rescue treatments.
"She may have become infected on March 1, because all four doctors
and nurses who treated an elderly SARS patient were later found to
have a fever," recalled Zhang Zhongde, director of the Emergency
Treatment Department.
Zhang was later confirmed as having SARS but has since
recovered.
When doctors and nurses visited Ye in the isolation ward, she never
failed to remind them to put on extra layers of protective
suit.
As
her condition worsened, she was transferred to the intensive care
unit where her breathing was aided by machine. Unable to speak
because of the machine, Ye wrote her wishes on paper and passed it
to all the people who came to see and treat her. It said: "Don't
come near me. I am infected."
In
the early hours of March 25, Ye Xin died, giving her life after
saving the lives of scores of other patients.
A
website mourning Ye was quickly set up and more than 160,000 people
visited within a few days to pay their respects.
Together with nine other Chinese nurses, Ye was awarded the
Florence Nightingale Prize, the highest honor for nurses, by the
International Committee of the Red Cross on May 12 for her
outstanding courage and dedication to work.
On
the same day, a statue of Ye Xin made from white marble was placed
in the hall of the Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese
Medicine to commemorate her selfless work.
No
new SARS cases have been reported for eight successive days since
May 18 in Guangdong Province, where the country's first SARS case
was recorded. By yesterday, 1,513 SARS cases were recorded in the
province and 1,432 people had been discharged from hospitals.
(China Daily May 26, 2003)