SG Complains

Singapore more prepared for infectious disease outbreak

Channelnewsasia:

SINGAPORE: Singapore was declared SARS-free five years ago. Learning from that episode, the country is now more prepared to face an infectious disease outbreak.

Dr Dessmon Tai was in charge of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in Tan Tock Seng Hospital when SARS hit the nation in 2003. And he was one of the first few doctors who came into contact with the first patient who brought the virus here.

Fortunately, Dr Tai was spared from being infected with SARS as he was expecting the virus to be the bird flu virus and had donned personal protective gear when dealing with the patient.

However, some of his colleagues were not so lucky – a number of them were infected and a few died. The public also shunned healthcare workers from the hospital.

See the full article at Channelnewsasia:

- I praise our healthcare workers from the hospital for their dedication and sacrifice during the Sars outbreak crisis five years ago. I do have some suggestions on how to improve on the standard and issues that happened during that time.

1. Healthcare workers are shunned by the public because they are wearing nurse uniforms when they are in the public which can be avoided if they are given time to change to plain clothes before going back home.
2. In an event of a infectious disease outbreak, all healthcare workers should be self quarantine at a nearby sleeping quarters for them to rest and with proper ventilation, hygiene and food provided. This is to prevent the spreading of the disease to their family members.
3. Nation wide shortages of masks to prevent public from spreading among themselves shows that we lack of preparation for such event. There should be a few billion mask manufactured and stored away in an event of such emergency to be distributed to local pharmacies.

If there are more hip and funky mask for public uses such as the one you see in the photo then the public probably will be more convinced to wear a mask in public during the outbreak.

Of course if the manufacturer does take the hint and capitalize on better looking designs and still maintains the same quality for virus prevention then the mask will be quite well received.

There are obvious reason to not wear the mask even during emergency.

The reasons were that the mask are very uncomfortable to wear, it smells after a while, look very strange when wearing, afraid of being laugh at and etc.

All these have to be addressed properly to able to persuade all people in Singapore to use the mask when the emergency is declared.

I like to suggest the following.

1. Put up sign boards all over singapore for people to wear mask when going into crowded areas.

2. Make a temporary rule to wear mask on MRT, Movie theater, Bus and Crowded areas like shopping centres.

3. Put up temporary stalls to sell cheap masks at all MRT stations.

4. Give tax break for shops that sells effective mask.

5. Put advertisement on TV to show how to wear the mask effectively and make it look COOL.