Andrew Burd (Prof Rtd)
Retired Professor of Plastic Surgery; Freelance Medico/Legal Consultant
Email: darburd@gmail.com
Co-Editor - The PMFA Journal
Andrew Burd is a British trained Plastic Surgeon, a Harvard trained Scientist, a School of Life trained Educator and a Pragmatic Ethicist. He was the Professor of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Centenary Professor of Regenerative Medicine and Translational Science at the School of Tropical Medicine in Kolkata, India. He is currently completing his PhD looking at the potential for Big Data to influence Health Policy. He is the founding and current Editor of The PMFA Journal. He is a staunch patient advocate with uncompromising views on patient safety.
Latest Contributions
Now is not the time to start spreading blame. There will be time for that later. At the same time, now, is the time to recognise the great courage required in true leadership.
The PMFA Journal co-editor Andrew Burd looks at the impact of SARS on plastic surgery in Hong Kong.
The weather was beautiful and there was a holiday atmosphere in the air. Five consecutive days without a new case. The goal is 28 consecutive new-disease-free days.
The latest 'letter' from our man in Hong Kong, The PMFA Journal Co-editor Andrew Burd.
It will be essential for there to be a full and impartial review of the response of each and every country to the global pandemic. That is the nature of science, accountability and responsibility.
There is an expression about “living through history”. I am not quite sure what it means but I have the inclination that it conveys a sense of being there, of being alive, when the world changes. Dramatically, irrevocably. We have a before, and we have an after, and we are now in the period of transition.
So much can change in just a few weeks. In Hong Kong after three weeks with no new cases we started to see a third wave in mid-July. More and more cases with no obvious source.
Today is National Day in Hong Kong. A celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on 1 October 1949.
It is seven months since I wrote the first ‘Letter from Hong Kong’. The message then was simple: “Fear is okay, panic is not and wear masks”. It is one month since I wrote the last letter and that message? “Life goes on and will go on no matter what.”
This will be the last ‘Letter from Hong Kong’. I began back in April with a simple message, wear masks.
On the 8 December 2020, Justice Judianna Barnes sentenced Dr Mak Wan-ling to three and a half years in prison. The charge for which she was found guilty was gross negligence manslaughter (GNM). She had injected a contaminated blood sample into a patient and the patient had died. The conviction was fundamentally flawed.