Yeh Chin-chuan was one of the best students in NTU's College of Medicine. Although he did not become an eminent physician, the battle against the SARS epidemic has earned him the reputation of a "medical man of steel." (Jimmy Lin)

The NTU-educated cultural critic Lin Ku-fang says that National Taiwan University graduates who have become prominent politicians or celebrities are undoubtedly brilliant stars, but throughout Taiwan there are also countless unsung, conscientious NTU people who can truly be said to hold up half the sky. It's said that still waters run deep: in times of crisis, NTU people are able to summon great strength and emerge unscathed. In April of this year, when Hoping Municipal Hospital was badly hit by SARS, Yeh Chin-chuan distinguished himself as a lone hero who rushed there to battle the epidemic. He is one of these extraordinary NTU graduates.

On April 26 of this year, while Taiwanese society was reeling from the shock of the sudden SARS outbreak, Yeh Chin-chuan, a professor at Tzu Chi University, Hualien, received a letter asking for help from the staff of Taipei's Ho-ping Hospital. Stirred by a physician's urge to help others, the following day he rushed to the hospital, which had already been sealed off, to investigate the infection foci and to set up standard operating procedures to combat the epidemic.

At first it was thought that the epidemic had been restricted to the Taipei metropolitan area, but then it was spread by people infected in northern Taiwan who went to hospitals in the south of the island for treatment. In May, following outbreaks inside Chung-ho Memorial Hospital (attached to Kaohsiung Medical University) and at Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Yeh Chin-chuan once again entered hospitals shunned by people terrified of the epidemic.

Having worked all along on the frontline of the fight against SARS, Yeh Chin-chuan says that the epidemic was not as serious as outsiders thought, but that medical personnel and Taiwanese society in general suffered from low confidence and morale. Yeh recounts that when he saw the plans to separate SARS patients from non-SARS patients at the Chung-ho and Chang Gung hospitals, he realized that there wasn't much to worry about: "I only went there to endorse their work. People trusted me and thought that I wouldn't cover up any mishandling."