Patient treated with serum
A SARS sufferer has been given serum taken from the blood of a recovered patient, a treatment that has shown results in Hongkong. It was tried here for the first time on Monday night.
Doctors at Tan Tock Seng Hospital used it on a very sick woman who, for about a week now, has needed a ventilator to breathe. Mrs Mok, whose husband Joseph was the first to die of Sars here, has improved slightly, said the clinical director of the Communicable Disease Centre, Dr Leo Yee Sin.
She said Mrs Mok, whose daughter Esther was one of three women who brought the virus to Singapore, now relies on the ventilator for 90 per cent of her oxygen needs, instead of being totally dependent on it.
She had been given serum, containing antibodies which fight the virus, taken from one of the 52 recovered Sars patients.
But before using it on more patients here, Dr Leo said there was a need to study the Hongkong experience to understand how much serum to use and when to use it.
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/topstories/story/0,4386,180669,00.htmlAnd how would we study the Hong Kong experiement if China still hasn't let the WHO in? And why haven't they? Thankfully, Canada has admitted our CDC and the WHO.