Steroid treatment leaves terrible legacy, but estate now clean
Two years ago Johnny Yip Kim-hung, along with dozens of his neighbours in Block E, was evacuated to isolation camps as Sars swept through the Amoy Gardens estate.
For him, life has returned to normal, but others who caught the disease are not so lucky. They are suffering from permanent bone damage, caused by their medical treatment.
Mr Yip, 37, says some residents have moved out of the estate, but he has never considered leaving because he believes it is 'the cleanest place' after hygiene improvements were made as a result of the outbreak.
Few residents of Block E - the centre of the Amoy Gardens outbreak, where 22 of the estate's 42 deaths occurred - will forget March 31, 2003, when the government ordered their homes quarantined.
A day later they were evacuated to two quarantine camps. The evacuees are now very close, often going out for meals together.
But they were not always so friendly. Mr Yip, who stayed first at the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village before being moved to the Lady MacLehose Holiday Village in Sai Kung Country Park, says what he remembers most about his eight days away from home were the protests about conditions.
