. no medication is a sure win to avoid death even for the youth and healthy
. the recovery time in hospital is very long
. it takes even longer to recover from the side effects of the current medications used

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners in Hong Kong have been serving its people since the early years. Due to historical reasons, TCM has not gained the proper attention from the government. Nevertheless, TCM did not go unnoticed, but instead continue to help us throughout the years. The reason could only be that TCM is effective and is able to assist where modern medicine fails.

With the impudicity of SARS in Hong Kong, it is now the time for TCM to formally assist Western Medicine to save lives together.

From the beginning of the battle with SARS, there have been lots of special formulae and herbs that claimed to be effective in preventing or even curing SARS. It should be noted that the way these formulae and herbs are used is but a primitive way to use natural Chinese herbs for fighting sickness. It is absolutely NOT the way TCM be employed to prevent or cure sickness. The essence of TCM is not the natural Chinese herbs itself but rather the Differential Diagnostic Process, which is guided by the theory of TCM.

In the ever going battle between human and disease, TCM never put disease on the primacy. Instead TCM always concentrate on how a patient fights against the disease, and subsequent to construct the appropriate formula that will help the body to fight in a better and faster manner. TCM trusts the immune system of the human body. The Differential Diagnosis Process first accesses whether the immune system is fighting too aggressively or too passively, and then accesses whether the toxin is getting out of the body quickly enough. This process allows TCM to treat new disease we have never seen before as long as our immune system reacts, which it always does.

As a consequence of this Differential Diagnostic Process, it is possible that different formulae would be used for patients with the same kind of sickness. On the other hand, the same formula may be used for different patients with different kind of sickness. Moreover, different formulae may be used for the same patient at different stages. It would be good for everyone if a single formula or herb could cure all SARS patients. But the truth is that it will never be the case. There is no point in trying out experiments on whether a particular herbs or formula can kill the virus in laboratories because the nature of the herbs are dedicated to help the body to kill the virus instead of killing the virus directly! Numerous experiments have been done on this subject in Mainland China during the past 30 years.

Hence, the only way to use TCM to help SARS patients is to have TCM practitioners diagnose each patient individually and prescribe the appropriate formula.

The immune system also reacts differently during different seasons and at different places. Spring is the time when all living things both human and virus grows and becomes more active. At the same time, our immune system will become more active in getting rid of the toxin trapped inside the body, while the virus in the external environment will be more active in attacking our body as well. Depending on the activeness of the body, we could divide the patients during springtime into different categories with different corresponding formula. For example, a patient could have both external virus attack and internal toxin cleanup with an immune system fighting too aggressively. We expect the SARS patients will fall into one of these categories. The weather in Hong Kong is different from Guangzhou even though we are geographically very close to each other. The dampness in Hong Kong is higher and so do the condition of the people living here. Thus, the situation in Hong Kong with more SARS patients found with the diarrhea symptom is of no big surprise to TCM practitioners.