Beijing residents are once more seeking professional medical treatment after shunning hospitals between late April and early June due to the SARS epidemic.

Two workers disinfect a ward at the Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital in Beijing July 15, 2003. A SARS-designated hospital during the outbreak period, it was ready to receive ordinary patients July 20 after no new SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome)cases were reported in the country for three weeks. [newsphoto.com.cn]

Major hospitals in the capital are happy to see people queue up again in their outpatient departments. The number has been rising steadily over the past few weeks and is already approaching the normal level reached in the same period last year.

Duan Wenli, who is in charge of general affairs at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, said: "To accommodate more outpatients, our hospital president has called on all the medical staff to find the time to provide more outpatient consultations.''

The daily number of outpatients at the hospital has been rising by about 200 every week since early May. It has reached a record of more than 5,000 at its peak, and the number has remained stable for the past two weeks.

Other general hospitals in Beijing have also experienced a surge in outpatients, though the level in some hospitals has still not fully recovered to the level before the SARS outbreak.

The People's Hospital of Peking University was quarantined between April 24 and May 15 because 88 medical workers were infected with SARS. It remained closed until June 9 to undergo a thorough disinfection and reconstruction to transform its layout. It is still gradually recovering to its previous levels of operation.

Its key departments saw a rebound in the number of outpatients on day after it officially reopened, according to Dai Qing, who is in charge of general affairs at the hospital. However, she declined to give any details.

The Beijing Children's Hospital has now reached two-thirds of the patient flow it had before the SARS epidemic. The daily number of outpatients was once as low as around 500 during the SARS epidemic, compared to the usual range of 3,500 to 4500. But the number has gradually risen towards previous levels since no new SARS cases have been reported in Beijing since June 11.

The infectious-disease institution You'an Hospital was one of the earliest Beijing hospitals to be set aside for SARS patients. It has also seen a rise in outpatient numbers since it discharged its last SARS patient on June 25. Most of the outpatients have been suffering from hepatitis or intestinal infectious diseases that are common in summer.

People are going to hospitals again partly because there is not so much concern generally about contracting SARS but also because all the remaining SARS patients are now being treated in Ditan Hospital, another major infectious-disease hospital in Beijing. Ditan is now the only Beijing hospital that is receiving SARS patients.

Beijing has 13 SARS patients in hospital as of yesterday.

It would be possible to hospitalize non-SARS patients in the rest of Ditan Hospital, but given the possibility of cross-infection, the hospital president suggested postponing the reopening of Ditan for other patients.

The China-Japan Friendship Hospital will be ready to receive ordinary patients tomorrow. It was temporarily transformed into a specialist SARS hospital in May and began to receive seriously ill patients on May 8.

The hospital will reopen all of its emergency departments and outpatient departments.

However, only some of the beds can be used at present because work is still going on in most of its wards to transform them back to the way they were.

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