SARS and its effect on medical education in Hong Kong

SARS and its effect on medical education in Hong KongSARS has disappeared and its scars are healing, but the fear of a winter return remains.We can only hope that, by the time this article is published in December, SARS will have gone for good and that no other 'super-spreader' visits Hong Kong.SARS affected medical education in Hong Kong physically -yes, physicallywhen 17 medical students at the Faculty of Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong came down with the virus after a visit to a ward with an index patient who was not known to be suffering from SARS at the time.Students at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong were lucky to escape the disease but had to go through the same anxieties and agony as their counterparts across the harbour. 1 (Hong Kong has 2 medical schools; one on Hong Kong Island and the other in New Territories).Both schools had to implement contingency plans quickly in order to maintain continuity in medical education.