Eyewitness: Hong Kong Sars doctor

Health workers face work pressures and worries about their families

The Sars outbreak in Asia has been especially harrowing for hospital workers, forced to work long hours at risk of infection. Intensive care consultant Dr Tom Buckley, in Hong Kong, told the BBC about his experiences.

I think there is a sense that life is returning to normal now in Hong Kong. Over the weekend more people were willing to move out into the town a bit more and there is certainly a lot more traffic on the roads as I was coming into work.

People still have Sars very much in their minds though, as most are still wearing surgical masks, even out in public.

I moved hospital two weeks ago when I was asked to set up the control procedures at another hospital where a number of staff contracted Sars.

While I was doing that, I thought it best that I should be isolated from my family and went into a self-imposed quarantine.

I was checked into a local hotel for two weeks.

I think I was the only resident in the hotel - apart from the hotel staff. I virtually saw no one during the two weeks that I was there.

There has been pressure on staff and families of those involved.

My ten-year-old son said to his mother, was his daddy going to come home or was he going to die?

Children have been asked not to go to school, they have been asked not to go for their piano lessons. This has happened especially for staff in the early days, from the Prince of Wales Hospital, where the initial large outbreak happened.

Our friends and neighbours have been very good towards us and have not shunned us at all.

I finally went home again yesterday and I am still taking precautions at home.

Little contact

It has been very difficult, it still is, it leads to a certain amount of stress and anxiety for all of us.

Especially in the first stages, the children were frightened.

My ten-year-old son said to his mother, was his daddy going to come home or was he going to die?

That was rather hard to keep in perspective.

I am back with them now but infection control procedures are still in place in our home.

There has been clear separation. I have a shower when I go home and all my clothes go out into the wash, a separate wash from the others.

There is a separation of eating utensils and we don't share food or toiletries.

I'm still sleeping on the couch instead of in my own bed and there is very little physical contact with my children now.

The incubation period seems to be between two and 10 days and it is believed, but still unknown really, that if you are incubating you are not infectious.

Hopefully while I remain quite healthy I am not in danger of spreading the disease to my family or my children.