SARS puts Singapore under the microscope

SARS puts Singapore under the microscope

Chua Lee Hoong
The Straits Times
Asia News Network
Singapore

A month and a half into the SARS crisis in Singapore, you know
that despite the still-rising casualty toll, life is regaining
some normalcy because:

* The kids are going back to school, suitably fortified with
the relevant information;

* People are trickling back to the shopping malls;

* Friends, the American sitcom, replaces viruses as the topic
of dinner conversations;

* Fitness companies recover from their shock to think up new
ways of "awe-ing" their customers, such as this: Buy a stationary
bicycle or treadmill and get a thermometer and one month's supply
of masks. SARS notwithstanding, the entrepreneurial spirit still
thrives.

Not that the crisis is by any means over -- as Health Minister
Lim Hng Kiang said: "We are in this for the long haul."

A tight cordon continues to be maintained against viral
spread, as tight as the one against terrorist infiltration of
Singapore. Paramedics in camouflage fatigues, gloves and surgical
masks greet air passengers from SARS-afflicted countries, making
an otherwise bustling Changi Airport look like a combat zone.

Cameras installed in homes ensure that people under home
quarantine don't venture out, and those who do will get an
electronic tag slapped around their wrists -- measures which
prompt the International Herald Tribune to call Singapore "a
country with a reputation for dramatic approaches to public
policy".

Dramatic or not, SARS is putting Singapore under the
microscope in more ways than one.

The world is watching how it handles this medical crisis: The
World Health Organization's Dr. David Mansoor said recently that
if Singapore can't contain the outbreak, it's going to be very
hard for other countries to do so.

Neighboring countries are watching too, in particular
Malaysia, whose citizens commuting across the Causeway daily to
work are a potential health hazard 50,000 strong. The joint
Singapore-Malaysia border health committee will hold its first
meeting in Kuala Lumpur today to review procedures to prevent the
disease from spreading.

Singapore took the first step towards bilateral cooperation on
SARS when Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong rang up the then-Acting
Malaysian Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Badawi, to tell him
of the transmission risk and to offer Singapore's assistance.

On the international front, it is even considering taking the
temperatures of all out-bound air passengers at Changi so as to
curb the export of SARS. This, said PM Goh, would hopefully
influence other countries into similar screening measures. "That
way there is a better chance we can keep this under control," he
said.

Within Singapore, SARS has thrown up issues otherwise seldom
discussed, such as the privacy of the individual.

Should SARS patients be named? The media's practice has always
been to try to give as much information, including names, as
possible so the public gets the full picture. Better to be open
about it as otherwise, all sorts of rumors might be spread about
who had been stricken.

But there is also another side to this: A name also means
opening the window to bigotry, discrimination and other ways for
the Ugly Singaporean to show himself.

The New Paper's poll this week shows 61 percent saying No to
naming patients and 39 percent saying Yes. Unfortunately, we
can't deduce what the figures imply about the Singapore character
until we know why people said No or Yes.

I'm reminded here of that press conference Prime Minister Goh
Chok Tong gave two Sundays ago, when instead of shaking hands
with journalists as is his usual practice, he resorted to the
Thai style of greeting, hands clasped together.

Not knowing why he did that, I thought then that the Prime
Minister was overreacting to the SARS scare. But I've since found
out that he had a good reason for his behavior: Education
Minister Teo Chee Hean paid a visit to the family of one of the
SARS victims in his constituency, shook hands, and came down with
a fever.

The fever proved a false alarm, but it alerted the political
leadership to potential hazards they had hitherto not thought of.
So, better safe than sorry.

Tough choices are also facing people lower down the ladder, in
hospitals, workplaces and residential estates: To mask or not to
mask; to shake or not to shake; even to talk or not to talk.

Tales of heroism battle it out with tales of selfishness and
bigotry, both captured vividly in the pages of this newspaper.
But it is probably the former which are winning, going by the
public outpouring of sympathy and gratitude for the hospital
workers risking their lives daily working in SARS danger zones.

Whoever thought Singaporeans have become so pragmatic that
heroism is dead thought wrong: This crisis shows that like flesh-
and-blood human beings elsewhere, the desire for heroes, and to
be heroes, is alive and well.

I was moved especially by two recent e-mail messages. One came
from a Singaporean woman doctor in Australia who is getting
married to an Australian doctor this Saturday. SARS or no SARS,
she declares, she is coming back to Singapore for her wedding
because this, for her, is home.

The other came from a young man: "If I were a doctor now, I
would be proud to be able to serve my nation in this fight to
eradicate this virus from our land, and I would do everything in
my ability to ensure it's contained. In these troubled times, we
need doctors and nurses who aspire to be heroes and, sadly,
heroes do make sacrifices. I wish I could be one of them but I'm
not a doctor."

As Singapore returns slowly to normalcy, these are the
legacies to remember and cherish.