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Following is a transcript of the remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a press conference on the local treatment experience of severe acute respiratory syndrome and the clinical correlation of outcome today (April 19):

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: We'll give you this table which Professor Sung has very kindly provided in term of the initial treatment responses, that just demonstrates how we made step-wise progression in developing our treatment protocols. The responses to steroids are about 90 per cent. The subsequent adjustments of our protocols and giving the steroids earlier, the overall responses to our treatment are about 95 per cent. So, our overall mortality currently is about five per cent. So this is our current status. This is the overall response rate but it doesn't distinguish between who will respond and who doesn't respond. As you know, there are factors such as age; the severity of illness, people who are more severely ill when they are presented, their response tend to be less good; their age is a factor; the third factor is whether the person has co-existing or pre-existing illness; and the fourth factor is how early people seek treatment. So, I'll ask Dr Yu (Wai-cho) to give you some of his views and findings on some of these factors that contribute to better responses or poorer responses.

(Chinese portion)

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I think we present you the overall review of how we develop our treatment protocols and the basis on which how these were developed. We also share with you the experience that we had been working with other places and countries relating to their experiences. In fact Dr Yam mentioned about her interactions with the colleagues in the Mainland. We also had interactions with clinicians in Singapore. In fact, initially their treatment is similar to what we are doing, the eventual process as described by Professor Sung. They also initially gave antibiotics and they started giving steroids, and then giving Ribavirin. My last phone call with the Ministry of Health in Singapore told me that they were in fact using very similar treatment as we are. So this is the global experience and I will be very happy to answer any questions.

(Please also refer to Chinese portion)

End/Saturday, April 19, 2003

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