Suddenly famous: In the thick of the battle against Sars

By JULIE MIDDLETON

TOM BUCKLEY, SARS DOCTOR

When the killer virus Sars started scaring the world last March, Tom Buckley was right in the thick of it.

The New Zealander, an intensive-care doctor in Hong Kong, was on the front line against Sars, which sickened more than 8500 worldwide and killed more than 800.

Dr Buckley's emails to a group of about 1500 colleagues worldwide about a flood of unusual pneumonia cases were, for many doctors, the first inkling that something was seriously wrong.

Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) had broken out in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, but the deliberate silence of the Chinese Government allowed it to spread alarmingly fast.

Dr Buckley, asked by medical heads to transfer from the Prince of Wales Hospital to Princess Margaret Hospital, where Sars patients were taken, found himself at the whirling, stressful, centre of the epidemic, at times sleeping on the floor of his office or in a hotel to avoid infecting his wife, Rosemary Barnett, and their school-age children, Ben, Nic and Rachel.

He reflects on "how stressful it was for everybody, and how ill the patients were and how lost we felt ... We didn't seem to be able to do anything to alter the course of the disease".

"Everyone was absolutely petrified. Despite the treatment we were giving, we were watching people deteriorating in front of our eyes. It was very frightening.

"You'd occasionally hear comment from around the world that [Sars] had been blown out of proportion, but when you look back, I don't think it was - we were right at the centre of it."

Doctors and nurses also succumbed to Sars, which just added to the stress.

Since the saga, Dr Buckley has been promoted to chief of service at Princess Margaret Hospital's intensive care unit. He is now much more rigorous about infection control than in the past.

"When I go into the ICU now it's like going into an operating theatre ... we wear surgical masks all the time, and we put on full personal protection equipment.

"Every patient in ICU is treated as potentially a Sars patient until we have carried out tests."

And the impact of Sars and his role on the family?

"It drew considerably closer," says Dr Buckley. "You just cannot go through this and not be affected by distress and emotions.

"We're a bit more thoughtful and considerate of each other's thoughts and feelings."

He does not think he has been changed by his experiences, but looks back "with a lot of sadness" at colleagues who came down with Sars, were given huge doses of steroids, and are now suffering a direct complication called avascular necrosis of the thigh bone.


The worst cases will need hip replacements.

"The school of thought is that steroids should not have been administered," says Dr Buckley, "and I'm in that school."

Sars, he says, is likely to return soon: research has provided little "good, hard evidence" or anti-Sars tools.

But hospitals all over the world are now far better prepared, and the risk of a repeat has not put the family off Hong Kong. "It's a good place."

Dr Buckley reckons he would like to stay another four years, but his wife thinks two will be enough.

The children were all born in Hong Kong, "but New Zealand is home to them".