The No. 6 ward of the Guangzhou Municipal Institute of Respiratory Diseases was brimming with joy and laughter when the last three severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) patients in south China's Guangdong province were discharged Wednesday morning.

"Come on, do you recognize them now?" A nurse asked Wang Xiaoli, a recovered woman SARS patient, while pointing at several doctors and nurses around her. "This is Mr. He, this is Miss Tan and this is the hospital's director Li." Wang was overjoyed to see all the doctors and nurses who rescued her life for the first time without gauze face masks.

"They are all very beautiful," said Wang.

Wang took numerous photos with the doctors and nurses. At the nurse's station on the sixth floor, more than 20 medical staffers were overwhelmed with flowers. Behind them on the wall were the striking big words of "We won, we succeeded".

"Today is very much like a festival. The joy of seeing our patients recovered from SARS disease is the best reward for our assiduous work in the past few months," said Li Hongjuan, lead nurse in the quarantined ward.

A poster in front of the No. 1 Hospital affiliated with the Guangzhou Provincial Institute of Medical Sciences, which the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases belongs to, tells of the difficulties and hardships of the medical staff while celebrating the success of the 193-day battle against the SARS virus.

For more than six months, the No. 1 Hospital shouldered the task of treating and curing most of the seriously-infected SARS patients in Guangdong province since it received the first one on Dec. 22 last year.

The hospital received a total of 300 SARS patients. The medical staff there developed a range of treatment methods which were widely adopted nationwide. The recovery rate of patients reached 93 percent with the rate for seriously-infected patients hitting 84 percent.

Most of Guangdong province's total 1,512 SARS cases have recovered, with 58 deaths from the epidemic. With the three SARS patients discharged from hospital this morning, the hard-hit province now reports zero SARS cases, declared Vice-Provincial Governor Lei Yulan.

The last three patients include a doctor from the Guangzhou Municipal Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Wang Xiaoli and her sister from north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The hospital had invested 2 million yuan (241,838 US dollars) to set up a temporary ICU and organized a group of 10 doctors and 15 nurses to give special treatment to the two sisters whose lives were then in critical condition.

"I could hardly control myself and suppress my excitement to leave the hospital," said Wang Xiaoli. She left the cheering crowds several times to calm herself down. "I have had three sleepless nights. What I really want to say to all is 'thanks'-- thanks to the doctors, nurses and the Guangzhou people."

"This is our second birthplace," said Wang excitedly. She invited the doctors and nurses in the hospital to visit Inner Mongolia and promised to welcome them with the highest Mongolian rituals.

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