Thursday, March 5, 2009
Online Civil Disobedience in Singapore
That there has been online civil disobedience is a fact. Vivid evidence of it has been present with the blog positing of articles and rally pictures in particular during GE 2006.
Yet during the Institute of Policy Studies forum “Getting Their Hands Dirty: Recent Developments in Singapore’s Political Blogosphere” on 4 March 2006, its researchers, in particular Ms Tan Simin, went out of the way to persuade the audience present that what we have now in Singapore is “online civic participation”. Weighing in, IPS director Ong Keng Yong intervened and spoke at length during the Q&A when discussion heated up surrounding the term online civil disobedience. He said “online civil disobedience” should be countered least it is picked up by bloggers and the media and its use by them becomes widespread.
However, choosing not to acknowledge that in the context of Singapore’s internet regulation that online civil disobedience has taken place and is perhaps even ongoing is to ignore that there is a problem with the current state of regulation governing the breath of online political expression.
The term online civil disobedience is important because to some extent because the regulation surrounding online political expression is still unclear, many sites and bloggers maybe still operating illegally.
For instance, during the initial period of Think Centre in 1999, several of its online activities were investigated and its members administered police warnings for their online political expression. The fact that there has been no wide spread current governmental persecution of new online actors does not make such acts legal or illegal.
Thus it was not surprising that among the registered attendees included representatives from the Strategic Planning and Development and Policy and Operations divisions of the Ministry of Home Affairs as well as from the Public Communications Division of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts.
The crux of the review by IPS was to understand the political blogosphere landscape and to speculate its potential to make an impact on Singapore’s politics. Hence, the emphasis was equally on anonymous sites and bloggers in particular with high hit sites such as Wayang Party Club.
But the sub text that emerged from the presentation was that there is some ambiguity over the legality of these expressions in Singapore’s political blogosphere.
What is also important is that IPS researcher Mr. Tan Tarn How clearly acknowledged that anonymous bloggers are in reality only blogging in pseudonymous because governmental agencies in Singapore have the technical capacity to find out the identity of such bloggers or already know their identity.
There were several themes in the IPS seminar that came up that are worth highlighting here which give an indication on how the researchers view Singapore’s political blogosphere:
There was an attempt to suggest that anonymously run sites’ content may not be authentic or reliable.
Even sites that were not run anonymously were admonished for not being fully “professional”.
In the IPS sample, there is a clear attempt to avoid analysing or including political sites or sites of activists.
The term “online civic participation” is actively promoted while trying to simultaneously negate terms like “activism” and “online civil disobedience’.
The IPS forum apart from providing an insight into research on the political blogosphere in Singapore also provided an insight into the research culture and choice of analytical terms promoted within such institutions and among some of its researchers.
Online civil disobedience is an important concept to mull over because in Singapore’s short internet history, it possible to make the claim that online civil disobedience is a precursor to the current offline civil disobedience which is organised with the help of online mobilization tools.
Trying to water down such terms does not help sharpen our analysis of the emerging political blogosphere and its political impact in Singapore.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=25430.1
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Vaccines as Biological Weapons?
Originally published March 3 2009
Vaccines as Biological Weapons? Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) There's a popular medical thriller novel in which a global pandemic is intentionally set off by an evil plot designed to reduce the human population. In the book, a nefarious drug company inserts live avian flu viruses into vaccine materials that are distributed to countries around the world to be injected into patients as "flu shots." Those patients then become carriers for these highly-virulent strains of avian flu which go on to infect the world population and cause widespread death.
There's only one problem with this story: It's not fiction. Or, at least, the part about live avian flu viruses being inserted into vaccine materials isn't fiction. It's happening right now.
Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The "mistake" (if you can call it that, see below...) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as health experts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened?
As published on LifeGen.de (http://www.lifegen.de/newsip/showne...), serious questions like this are being raised:
"Baxter International Inc. in Austria 'unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighbouring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease'. Austria, Germany, Slowenia and the Czech Republic - these are the countries in which labs were hit with dangerous viruses. Not by bioterrorist commandos, but by Baxter. In other words: One of the major global pharmaceutical players seems to have lost control over a virus which is considered by many virologists to be one of the components leading some day to a new pandemic."
Or, put another way, Baxter is acting a whole lot like a biological terrorism organization these days, sending deadly viral samples around the world. If you mail an envelope full of anthrax to your Senator, you get arrested as a terrorist. So why is Baxter -- which mailed samples of a far more deadly viral strain to labs around the world -- getting away with saying, essentially, "Oops?"
But there's a bigger question in all this: How could this company have accidentally mixed LIVE avian flu viruses (both H5N1 and H3N2, the human form) in this vaccine material?
Was the viral contamination intentional?
The shocking answer is that this couldn't have been an accident. Why? Because Baxter International adheres to something called BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) - a set of laboratory safety protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials.
As explained on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosaf...):
"Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents. This is considered a neutral or warm zone. All procedures involving the manipulation of infectious materials are conducted within biological safety cabinets or other physical containment devices, or by personnel wearing appropriate personal protective clothing and equipment. The laboratory has special engineering and design features."
Under the BSL3 code of conduct, it is impossible for live avian flu viruses to contaminate production vaccine materials that are shipped out to vendors around the world.
This leaves only two possibilities that explain these events:
Possibility #1: Baxter isn't following BSL3 safety guidelines or is so sloppy in following them that it can make monumental mistakes that threaten the safety of the entire human race. And if that's the case, then why are we injecting our children with vaccines made from Baxter's materials?
Possibility #2: A rogue employee (or an evil plot from the top management) is present at Baxter, whereby live avian flu viruses were intentionally placed into the vaccine materials in the hope that such materials might be injected into humans and set off a global bird flu pandemic.
It just so happens that a global bird flu pandemic would sell a LOT of bird flu vaccines. Although some naive people have a hard time believing that corporations would endanger human beings to make money, this is precisely the way corporations now behave in America's ethically-challenged free-market environment. (Remember Enron? Exxon? Merck? DuPont? Monsanto? Need I go on?)
Make no mistake: Spreading bird flu is a clever way to create demand for bird flu vaccines, and we've all seen very clearly how drug companies first market the problem and then "leap to the rescue" by selling the solution. (Disease mongering of ADHD, bipolar disorder, etc.)
Why it all suddenly makes sense
Until today, I would not have personally believed such a story. I personally thought talk of bird flu vaccines being "weaponized" was just alarmist hype. But now, in light of the fact that LIVE bird flu viruses are being openly found in vaccine materials that are distributed around the world, I must admit the evidence is increasingly compelling that something extremely dangerous is afoot.
Baxter, through either its mistakes or its evil intentions, just put the safety of the entire human race at risk. Given all the laboratory protocols put in place to prevent this kind of thing, it is difficult to believe this was just a mistake.
There is some speculation, in fact, that the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people worldwide (http://images.google.com/images?hl=...), was intentionally started by injecting servicemen with "experimental" flu vaccines that actually contained live, "weaponized" flu material just like the material being distributed by Baxter today.
Examine the historical record. You'll find that the 1918 flu originated with servicemen. Even more interestingly, it began in multiple cities, simultaneously! There is no single point of origin with the 1918 flu. It appears to have "spontaneously" sprung up across multiple cities all at once, including a military base in Kansas. (Kansas? Yep. So how did it get to Kansas in an era when air traffic was virtually non-existent? Vaccines, of course!)
All those cities and servicemen have one thing in common: Flu shot vaccinations given to them by the military.
If you put the pieces together on this, it's not too difficult to suspect that influenza could potentially be used as a tool of control by governments or drug companies to catalyze outrageous profit-taking or power grabbing agendas. A desperate, infected population will gladly give up anything or pay anything for the promise of being cured.
Or was it just an innocent mistake? Oops!
But for the skeptics who dismiss any such talk of conspiracy theories, let's examine the other possibility: That a global avian flu pandemic was nearly unleashed unintentionally due to the outrageous incompetence of the companies handling these viral strains.
As we just saw, this is a very real possibility. Had this live bird flu virus not been detected, it could have very easily found its way into vaccines that were injected into human beings. And this, in turn, could have unleashed a global avian flu pandemic.
If the drug companies making and handling these materials are so careless, then it seems like it's only a matter of time before something slips through the safety precautions again and gets unleashed into the wild. And that leads to essentially the same scenario: A global pandemic, widespread death, health care failures and a desperate population begging for vaccines.
So either way -- whether it's intentional or not -- you essentially get the same result.
Why a global pandemic is only a matter of time
I am on the record stating that a global pandemic is only a matter of time. The living conditions under which humans have placed themselves (crowded cities, suppressed immune systems, etc.) are ideal for the spread of infectious disease. But I never dreamed drug companies could actually be accelerating the pandemic timeline by contaminating vaccine materials with live avian flu viruses known to be highly infectious to humans. This, it seems, is a whole new cause for concern.
You can believe what you will. Maybe you agree with the nefarious plot theory and you agree that corporations are capable of great evils in their quest for profits. Or perhaps you can't accept that, so you go with the "accidental contamination" theory, in which your beliefs describe a very dangerous world where biohazard safety protocols are insufficient to protect us from all the crazy viral strains being toyed with at drug companies and government labs all across the world.
In either case, the world is not a very safe place when deadly viral strains are placed in the hands of the inept.
We are like children playing God with Mother Nature, rolling the dice in a global game of Viral Roulette where the odds are not in our favor. With companies like Baxter engaged in behaviors that are just begging to see the human race devastated by a global pandemic wipeout, it might be a good time to question the sanity of using viral strains in vaccines in the first place.
Vaccine-pushing scientists are so proud of their vaccines. They think they've conquered Mother Nature. Imagine their surprise when one day they learn they have actually killed 100 million human beings by unleashing a global pandemic.
We came close to it this week. A global pandemic may have just been averted by the thinnest of margins. Yet people go on with their lives, oblivious to what nearly happened.
What's inescapable at this point is the fact that the threat of a pandemic that looms for all of human civilization, and that drug companies may, themselves, be the source of that threat.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=28091.1
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Lee Wei Ling: Nobody knows tomorrow
Lee Wei Ling: Nobody knows tomorrow
By Lee Wei Ling, for the Sunday Times, 01 Mar 2009
The Straits Times carried last week a story about a group of Singaporeans whose rented minibus had careened off the highway and plunged down an embankment near Milford Sound in New Zealand.
Two passengers had to be airlifted to hospital. The most seriously injured was a 59-year-old woman who fractured her spine, arm and collarbone and required surgery.
Police believe that the driver was driving too fast and may also ‘have been distracted by the spectacular view’. Those injured had not worn their seat belts.
The report brought back memories of my own close brush with death on Dec 23, 1995. I was on a hiking holiday in New Zealand, having arrived in Christchurch the preceding day.
A car rental company had delivered a brand new Holden direct from the factory to my hotel on the morning of Dec 23. I drove across Arthur’s Pass to Punakaiki (Pancake Rocks) on the west coast of South Island. After walking around a scenic lookout, I drove south along the coastal road to Greymouth, where I had reserved a motel room.
On my right, a sheer drop thousands of metres below, was the azure Tasman Sea. On my left was the mountain, into the sides of which the road with hairpin bends was carved. I kept one eye on the road and the other on the sea with its pounding surf. The scenery was magnificent.
Suddenly, I noticed a road sign - ‘30km/hr’ - just before a very sharp bend in the road. I stepped on the brakes. The next moment, the car was spinning out of control.
‘Damn it, what an inconvenient place to have an accident,’ I thought as I pictured in my mind’s eye the car on the ocean bed, divers trying to cut open the car door, people leafing through my wet passport, and the Singapore High Commission in Wellington telephoning my parents in Singapore.
The car crashed into the mountainside with such tremendous force it turned 180 degrees. The front of the car faced the road, while the rear end was ramped up the mountainside as it slid into the ditch beside the road. If I had not had my seat belt on, I would have been flung against the windscreen. Instead, to my astonishment, I was totally unharmed.
My next problem was to get the car out of the ditch. I walked down to a village a few kilometres from the site of the accident and went into a house that had its door wide open. A man appeared in response to my loud ‘Hello, hello’.
After hearing my story, he fetched a thick rope, drove his car to the site of the bashed-up Holden, tied his car to it and managed to tow it out of the ditch. He then test-drove the Holden. He told me that I could drive the short distance to my motel but to be careful because the bonnet was no longer secure and might at any moment spring up and obscure my vision. I thanked him profusely and thought to myself: ‘New Zealanders are kinder than Singaporeans. I am not sure I would have done the same if our situations had been reversed!’
I got to my motel safely but found that there was no vacancy for Dec 24. By hook or by crook, I had to get the rental car replaced and drive on to my next motel near the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers the next day.
Next morning, the rental car company replaced my car and I continued on the rest of my holiday as planned. I was pleased with myself for having been calm and cool throughout the episode and had no intention of letting my parents know what had happened.
On Dec 31, I returned to Singapore as planned. When I arrived at Changi Airport, I phoned my mother and said: ‘Hi Ma, I am home safe.’ A few weeks later, my cousin told me that my mother had subsequently said to her: ‘Something happened to Ling on that trip. I’d rather not know what.’
My mother knew me better than I knew myself. She sensed that the phone call from Changi Airport indicated that I must have encountered danger during the trip.
I have been hiking since my youth, usually alone. By hiking alone, I break the first rule in any hiking book. I know the risk I am taking. I always calculate my risks. Where hikes are concerned, I balance the pleasure of solitude, the beauty of nature and the physical challenge of the hike against the risks of each particular route, as determined by the terrain and the weather. I have had many close calls but the incident in New Zealand was the closest.
My hiking and my occupation as a doctor bring home to me the saying that no one knows tomorrow; in fact, we don’t even know our next moment. I go hiking alone, courting danger, yet fate has spared me many times. On the other hand, while safely in Singapore, medical mishaps have on several occasions put me in very precarious situations.
The two lessons of this story that I hope to share with readers are:
Lee Wei Ling
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26026.1
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Life with the Lees
Ouyang Huanyan looked after MM Lee's household from the 1940s. Mavis Toh and Lim Ruey Yan report
 |  | PM Lee Hsien Loong as a child, posing for a photograph with a maid. |
| |
Never did she expect the eldest son of the family to eventually become the Prime Minister of Singapore.
She also witnessed the wedding of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Madam Kwa Geok Choo, his classmate from Cambridge University. It was a simple affair where relatives were invited to dinner.
This anecdote and others are published in a book titled Zishu Nu From Shunde, by China Women Publishing House in 2006.
It features the history and stories of Madam Ouyang and other women who left China to work as housekeepers and nannies in South-east Asia in the early 1900s. They all came from the Shunde district in Guangdong province.
The book came to the attention of National Neuroscience Institute chief Lee Wei Ling recently. Dr Lee, Mr Lee's daughter, told The Sunday Times that a friend had chanced upon the book while visiting a village in China.
In one of the chapters, Madam Ouyang, now 91 and still healthy (see box below), recounted her life in Singapore.
Born in 1918, she left her hometown in Cangmen at the age of 14 to join her sister in Singapore.
They were women - known variously as majie, zishu nu and amah - who took vows of celibacy so they could commit to serving their masters, and were a common sight then.
Her first employer was the famous Tan Kah Kee, a rubber magnate and Chinese community leader who gave money to start numerous schools. But she had no idea who he was. Her sister was already working in the household.
The Tans thought highly of the Ouyang sisters. When Japanese troops invaded Singapore in 1942, the Tan family had wanted to leave together with the sisters, but Madam Ouyang's sister did not want Madam Ouyang to go to a faraway place as she was still young. The Tans left their youngest daughter in the care of the two women as they fled the country.
After the war, so grateful were they to the women for keeping the girl safe that Mrs Tan asked the sisters to live with the family. Recalled Madam Ouyang in the book: 'She said, 'I've always treated you sisters like my daughters, please stay'.'
But by that time, Madam Ouyang was already working for the Tans' neighbour - the Lee family.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew returned home from his studies in Britain during her second year with the family. She witnessed his wedding - a simple affair where relatives were invited to a meal to celebrate the occasion.
Madam Ouyang recalled that although Mr Lee's home was big, it was furnished simply 'and was in fact a little bit old'. She and the other workers felt at ease there because the family was friendly and warm.
She remembered how Mrs Lee, a lawyer, was especially kind to the majie. She once told them: 'We're busy in the office and will arrive home late, so please have your meals first and do not go hungry. You can prepare the dishes after we get home from work. Everyone will not be inconvenienced this way. Is it all right?'
Hence, the practice in the household was for the workers to eat before the employers.
Most of the workers in the Lee household came from the Pearl River Delta because Mr Lee felt that they were 'well-disciplined, refined and hardworking'.
The family also welcomed other majie when Madam Ouyang invited them over for chats and visits. Mrs Lee addressed them as 'jie' (sister) and Madam Ouyang would feel a sense of pride.
Even after Mr Lee became prime minister, his style remained simple, she remembered.
She recalled that the maids used to address Wei Ling by her name. When Mr Lee took office, Madam Ouyang started addressing her as 'Da Xiao Jie', a term used for the employer's eldest daughter.
But the young girl told her sternly: 'It's my father who's the prime minister, not me. So please address me by my name.'
The Lees often took her on their outings so she wouldn't be cooped up at home. As she watched Mr Lee hold the hands of his children, Madam Ouyang felt that the prime minister was more like a patient father and a friendly friend. 'Someone you can trust and be at ease with.'
Mr Lee also valued tradition. She recalled one Chinese New Year where he ordered a set of mandarin jackets for the children.
She added that he told his elder son Hsien Loong: 'We are Chinese, so we should follow the traditional customs when celebrating the Spring Festival.'
In the late 1980s, Madam Ouyang returned home to Cangmen due to her poor health. She often received letters from Dr Lee inquiring about her health and asking her to return to Singapore.
Dr Lee, who still refers to Madam Ouyang as 'Yan Jie' today, had been raised by her since young. She told The Sunday Times that Madam Ouyang's voice was strong when she phoned her last year.
'She said her nieces and nephews were taking good care of her,' said Dr Lee. 'She remembers all the time with us and invited me to stay and visit.'
Having worked under two historical leaders, people are always interested in hearing about their stories from Madam Ouyang, noted the book.
But in her eyes, her employers were ordinary people. 'The only difference is that they were very busy, working constantly with hardly any time to rest,' she said.
She added that her encounters with the historical figures have made her life memorable.
'I have not lived my life in vain,' she said.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26021.1
Lee Wei Ling: What keeps me rooted to Singapore
Lee Wei Ling: What keeps me rooted to Singapore
By Lee Wei Ling, for the Sunday Times
01 Feb 2009
This is an era when international mobility is a privilege that many of our bright young men and women enjoy. The world is their oyster.
They were born and raised in Singapore. Some may have completed their tertiary education here, while others did so overseas. But I have cousins whose children have chosen to exchange their pink Singapore identity cards for United States passports.
If ever there is a major crisis in Singapore, those who would be able to emigrate, be accepted by another country and get jobs there would invariably be people who are wealthy and/or professionals with marketable skills.
The Government knows that talent is mobile and that Singapore must compete with other countries to offer an attractive living environment and vibrant culture so as to retain talented Singaporeans and attract foreign talent here.
I am a paediatric neurologist. I can pass any medical examination that Canada, the US, Australia or New Zealand may impose before accepting me as a high-skilled immigrant or ‘exceptional alien’. Would I take such opportunities?
Perhaps in a moment of madness, when my yearning for hiking outweighs all the other factors that keep me in Singapore and make me want to fight for it if the need should arise.
I have been fortunate in having true friends in Singapore. They and my nuclear family are the main reason I will stay if foreign armies invade or bombs are dropped on Singapore.
In 1975, the year South Vietnam fell, I was a medical student training in paediatrics. Paediatricians are especially kind and decent people, for only such people would be drawn to work mainly with children. Still, there was serious talk of emigration among my paediatrician mentors. One did emigrate with his entire family.
My parents called a family meeting in their bedroom soon after Saigon fell. My father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, then Singapore’s Prime Minister, told us: ‘Mama and I will stay here to the bitter end. Hsien Loong is already in the SAF and must do his duty. But the three of you need not feel obliged to stay.’
In the end, the Vietnamese communists did not march down Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore thrived, Hsien Yang followed Hsien Loong in accepting both the SAF and President’s Scholarships, and my brothers both served out their bonds.
I myself had accepted a President’s Scholarship in 1973 to study medicine at the University of Singapore. It was a five-year course for which the Public Service Commission paid me approximately $3,000 to $4,000 annually. Most of it went towards my medical school fees. I was bonded for eight years.
Subsequently, I accepted several more scholarships from the Government and have served a total of 16 years of bond. I stayed on in the public sector after completing my bond and am now in my 31st year in service. I have also had the opportunity to live and study overseas for four years. I enjoyed living in North America.
As a nature lover, I appreciated the magic of the seasons. I enjoyed observing spring trying to announce its arrival with crocuses that may subsequently be buried by a late spring snowfall.
Spring in its full-blown splendour of trees, with budding leaves in the most tender hues of green…The daffodils…The cherry blossoms in full bloom along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts…Running alone at first dawn or twilight, as petals fluttered down on you, was a magical experience.
Then fall with its burst of colours, turning what was an almost uniformly green landscape into a tapestry of yellow, gold, rust, red and green that met your eyes as you jogged. And then winter announcing the end of the year - time to go cross-country skiing or find an indoor track to run.
The changing seasons enhanced the quality of life in a way that only someone who has lived in New England for three years, as I did, can appreciate. But I always returned home. I never doubted that home was anything other than Singapore.
I suffered a serious surgical complication on Jan 9 and am now recuperating in Singapore General Hospital as I write this.
I was in pain earlier this afternoon and, unable to do much, I dozed off. When I woke, my friend Gino was quietly sitting in the next room.
He had brought along with him brand-new running shorts and socks. I had messaged him at noon to ask him to get them for me but did not expect him to do so immediately. Gino is an excellent physiotherapist who helped me through an extremely difficult rehabilitation in 2002. We have been close friends since.
He had recently resigned from the Singapore Sports Council and we discussed the best location for him to set up shop. He gave me a sports massage and we chatted for some time until I felt up to doing my step aerobics.
This morning, one of my cousins dropped by, followed by my doctor-friends from the National Neuroscience Institute.
I am now staring at the skyline that I had stared at from the same window in 2002 and 2003. Then as now I was hospitalised for prolonged periods because of serious surgical accidents, which I later pulled through against great odds.
There are many more tall buildings now than there were in 2002 and 2003. This is a city-state. I am unlikely ever to go hiking again - in Hawaii or Bhutan, Kerala or New Zealand - my one and only real hobby.
What keeps me rooted here are my nuclear family and my friends. We enjoy good times together and help and support one another during bad times. They - rather than Olympic medals or National Day Parades - are the main reason why I feel this place is home and why it is worth fighting for if the need should arise.
The idea of dying does not scare me. But to be willing to stay on and fight for Singapore - that goes beyond simple logic. It is the result of the emotional bond I have with those who are important in my life as well as with those for whom I feel a sense of responsibility.
Lee Wei Ling
The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26025.1
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Heart-attack care: Transparency the best policy
Heart-attack care: Transparency the best policy
ST letter by Ms Lee Wei Ling
IN MY column, ‘Righting a wrong comes from the heart’, last Sunday, I described the status of treatment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in the public health-care sector. I stated the facts which were accurate up to Jan 1 this year. I felt that both the public and general practitioners (GPs) should have the relevant information about the capabilities of all our public-sector hospitals.
I wrote about it because my medical school classmate, a GP, was flabbergasted when I told her that Tan Tock Seng Hospital had no round-the-clock capability to open up obstructed heart arteries by ‘ballooning’ on an emergency basis.
Another medical school classmate, a specialist in the private sector, was forced by the SCDF ambulance to have her mother admitted to Tan Tock Seng last month and there was no doctor capable of doing ballooning on an emergency basis until she found one to do so.
Alexandra Hospital had no such capability and my classmate advised all her patients to go to the nearest hospital if they suspect AMI. She subsequently obtained feedback from other doctors that the ballooning service at Changi General Hospital was not great. I chose not to mention Changi General Hospital in my column, nor did I say that ‘only the National Heart Centre and National University Hospital are able to handle heart-attack patients after office hours’.
But in yesterday’s report, (’Most hospitals offer 24/7 heart-attack care’), Tan Tock Seng Hospital, the Ministry of Health and the Singapore Civil Defence Force seem perturbed by what I wrote.
Instead of looking forward to improving care of AMI patients, all three organisations expressed unhappiness about this public disclosure.
My view is that the public will be understanding and forgiving if they know this is the best service the Government can provide, given the various constraints. Giving the public the knowledge means AMI patients can make an informed and wise choice when deciding where to go for treatment.
Prof Lee Wei Ling
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages?msg=26027.1