Interview Excerpt

Summary of interview
Looking back to the SARS period, Dr. Lily Chiu relates the Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) experience as it became Hong Kong’s dedicated SARS Hospital. Despite the precipitous decision to designate the hospital as the SARS Hospital, PMH management started the preparation work as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, owing to insufficient information, they had to carry on their duties while devising the policies at the same time. Dr. Chiu believes that the major setback was that: the hospital preparation work was based on the extrapolation of data taken from patients at an early stage of the disease. Yet patient admission had been accelerated due to the outbreak in Amoy Gardens. With patients mostly in infective period, demand for intensive care services was much greater than anticipated, and the ICU was quickly overloaded. Even if equipment was sufficient, there was an obvious shortage of medical staff with relevant skills. Dr. Chiu thinks that criticism from the Select Committee of the Legislative Council, which was formed after the SARS incident, was not justified. On the contrary foreign experts agreed with the decisions executed by the hospital: housing the patients for centralized treatment so as to prevent spreading of the disease to other hospitals. Dr. Chiu also describes how the hospital, after SARS, continued to improve the facilities for infectious diseases, the new Infectious Diseases Block design and the staff operating mode within the facilities.