By chance, a few weeks ago I saw a documentary about SARS in China.
Remember that the 2008 Olympics were to be in Beijing, and so Chinese authorities in 2002 tried everything to avoid inflicting any tiny bit of fear in the tourists coming to China. They tried at first to admit there was an epidemics, and along the way declared many SARS fatalities as due to other causes. The things become more transparent (i.e. the official numbers were more realistic) when the medical community all over the country began to put a strong pressure. Many doctors were victims because when SARS started the hospitals didn't have equipment to protect them conveniently. But today no one really can tell the "true" number of SARS victims (and also of infected people) in China, and that biases the global SARS statistics, of course.
But the documentary was not about the deaths: it was about the survivors that have been treated in hospitals. In fact, the standard treatment was to deploy huge amounts of cortisone in the infected and that, AFAIR, stops blood flow in bones (among other secondary effects) and so many bone parts died in the patients in the forthcoming months and years. Some people have already gone into surgery many times (up to a dozen or so, in some cases) to patch those dead bones and other injuries in joints, many are in wheelchairs and in some cases they are sorts of abandoned by family and authorities. Some have already died, or even committed suicide.
It was said that the "cortisone" treatment was in China only, other countries (such as Canada, which had a bunch of deaths) didn't follow those medical guidelines.
Couldn't google the documentary name but just found an article about the issue:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/07/content_9276884.htm
Final words: many survivors are still severely crippled from SARS. For them the SARS epidemics didn't end in a few months. And local medical practices still make a strong impact in the quality of life of the patients.