Cameras in public are fast becoming a way of life     14 June 2009 

We live in a world characterized by high levels of scrutiny and surveillance. George Orwell’s Big Brother is well and truly watching, and little escapes him. While the fictional character was driven by an obsessive desire to wield power, today’s equivalent of the dictator of Oceania will come up with all sorts of reasons that are supposed to be good for us, such as security.  

Surveillance strategies differ, from the UK where you are so closely watched that the physical presence of the cameras is almost as tolerated as that of street lights. Elsewhere, it’s on an ad hoc need-basis, such as high-crime areas. And herein lies the dilemma, to what extent are surveillance systems acceptable without infringing on personal privacy? Some argue that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to be afraid of. Let the cameras lead the police to the criminals.  

Surveillance systems are sometimes severely tested. At the moment, Hong Kong police are scanning hours of footage to find a person who has been terrorizing residents by throwing bottles of acid down the streets from tower blocks. People have ended up in hospital with serious burns. It is an intriguing case, and speculation is rife about the motive.  

Publicly at least, the theories being considered seem to evolve largely around triads hitting back at perceived police heavy-handedness. Personally, I would say that doesn’t quite sound like the way triads operate. They might attack rival triads and maybe even the icons of officialdom, but attacks on the general public? Maybe I’m being naïve, but if I were to hazard a guess, I would not rule out the possibility of a jilted lover out to make a point and ‘punish’ the public at large. It has been known to happen before, the idea that an individual, unable to deal with their own personal trauma, decides to implicate everyone else. 

The interesting thing is that it is just these sorts of events that provide further rationale for authorities to cover even more ground, literally, with surveillance technology.  

It isn’t just the authorities that are watching. It’s anyone with a camera. Take Google Street View. These people tell us we should be able, with a few clicks of a mouse, to see our way through every street we like, anywhere in the world, well, at least where their cameras take the liberty of roaming. The problem is, they don’t ask you if you mind having your home exhibited to the whole world.  

Some people have resisted this infringement on their privacy, and demanded that Google removes images of their homes and streets. Such people include Tony Blair, former UK prime minister. The Blairs are likely to be listened to, which is more than can be said for ordinary citizens like yours truly. Organizations like Google seem to be oblivious of the possible dangers their technology, if that’s what it is, creates.  

When they uploaded images of a naked child in a park, it didn’t seem to bother them that they were possibly playing into the hands of pedophiles. This was in the UK, a country in which a day doesn’t go by without you reading some story about an attack on children, or whether a community should be informed that a pedophile is to be housed in their neighbourhood.  

In Japan, Google Maps have been embroiled in a number of rows too, from accusations on infringing on privacy to a charge of racial discrimination after uploading innocent-looking but highly sensitive images of antique pictures deemed offensive to the ‘burakumin’ caste. Although the maps have long existed, Google gave them a new lease of life by exposing the location of a former lowly caste that was associated with a lifestyle and ‘dirty’ tasks that ordinary, more privileged individuals wouldn’t touch back in feudal times when Japan was ruled by powerful shoguns.  

It is not a simple case that certain things should remain hidden or swept under the carpet of political correctness. Whenever maps of the locations of burakumin are made available to the general public, they are traditionally accompanied by explanatory notes in order to clarify the context. Google Maps ignored this simple practice.  

The caste system long ceased to exist, but the wounds of the descendants of the ‘untouchable’ have never truly healed. These people still face discrimination in a society which likes to boast of its homogeneity. By now we’ve come to understand that ethnic homogeneity does not necessary mean peaceful co-existence and an absence of the excesses of ethnic chauvinism. Rwanda and Burundi are a case in point. Only two ethnic communities, but they failed to get along. Much of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa has to contend with dozens if not hundreds. As for Somalia, let’s not even get started. 

Japanese companies carefully scan your background not only to ensure they get the ‘best’ employees, which sounds reasonable enough, but also check your heritage to screen out ‘undesirable’ tainted remnants of the ancient caste system. Access to advanced technology certainly helps, and Japan has no shortage of advanced technology. They literally wrote the book on technology. They also rely on very elaborate family records which go back centuries.  

Cameras are of course not the last word on security, but for now, they’re here to stay. 

Medical case raises questions about the professions    7 June 2009 

Every now and then a story catches your attention and forces you to take a long hard look at the way we manage our affairs as a nation. Let’s put this in context. A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to know there are traditional brain surgeons operating in parts of Kenya. I always imagined traditional healers were mostly herbalists who mixed herbs and bitter roots to make dark barely-drinkable concoctions.  

The idea that some are in fact called upon to offer their services alongside mainstream modern medicine was one that I found quite impressive. For a knowledge management scholar, this is a good example of inter-disciplinary knowledge-sharing. It shows that we have not altogether abandoned our ‘local knowledge’, and that there is a lot of scientific knowledge that exists on the peripheries of our society than needs to be nurtured. Ours is a society which could do a better job of nurturing local talent and traditional expertise. From the reports I saw, traditional healers and surgeons are only invited to engage with mainstream science on an ad hoc and piecemeal basis.  

Contrast this with the Asian, in particular Chinese case. I’m not aware that traditional medicine is taught in our medical schools, and would truly like to know. My hunch is that there is no such thing. Chinese medicine is a well-established science within institutions of higher learning and within the medical profession as a whole. There are Chinese people who have known nothing but traditional cures and won’t even touch an aspirin. It is a phenomenon that goes back a long way, and is backed by eons of rigorous research. Today you’ll find universities in other parts of greater China offering courses on traditional medicine.  

The heart-rending story that has captured the imagination of many Kenyans is that of the poor boy who finds himself trapped by a strange and debilitating scar-like growth. The picture itself is shocking, but the thought that the Kenyan medical profession’s response for a period of ten years was to prescribe painkillers beggars belief. Perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising after all, given what we know about responses to previously reported deformities.  

But it is quite extraordinary that none of the doctors who saw this young man were driven by an intellectual curiosity at the very least to determine what this bizarre affliction was and how it could be tackled. Many of us ordinary wananchi have sought out the views of experts and going by the huge response in cyberspace, you can see that Kenyan compassion has not been eroded by the general cynicism bled by our day-to-day politics.  

The scientific opinions of Kenyans to this case once again demonstrate the breadth of knowledge possessed by our people, and their willingness to engage with contemporary issues. Many of these commentators are in Diaspora. Others are not, which raises more questions about exactly what the professional, in this case medical, classes play in addressing the country’s woes.  

Business schools around the world are now offering courses on business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Shocking revelations of business malpractices around the world, from Tokyo and Seoul to Paris, London and New York, have placed the ethical question firmly in the business education curriculum. That is not to say it will stop business and MBA graduates engaging in the corrupt practices that have brought banks and other institutions crashing.  

But at least it opens their eyes to their responsibility to the broader society they operate in, and an awareness of their moral responsibility to make ethical choices. I don’t have the facts of the young man’s specific dealings with the medical practice, but it seems to me there’s a serious ethical lapse somewhere in this whole debacle.  

In the UK recently, numerous bureaucrats and medical practitioners found themselves facing the music when they were deemed to have failed to prevent the death of a baby through negligent failure to take action when evidence of sustained abuse was quite evident. As Mahatma Gandhi and many others have said, the test of a civilized society is how it treats its weakest and most vulnerable members. 

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When China opened its doors to foreign investors and so forth, some of those who embraced this opportunity are African drug dealers, mostly of west African origin. The escalating problem of African drug mules, including a substantial number of Kenyans now languishing in foreign jails, and occasionally facing the death penalty has a number of related angles.  

First, is the sheer desperation that drives individuals to take the risk of ferrying narcotics. It is a huge gamble, with a potentially happy ending since some actually escape unscathed and go on to enjoy their rewards. But the downside is often tragic. Many of those who willingly succumb have little idea just how ruthlessly most foreign jurisdictions enforce the law on drug-dealing.  

The idea that you can beat a highly advanced surveillance and enforcement system and live to tell the tale, particularly in an unfamiliar environment is one that many would find hard to digest. However, you can have all the warnings in the world, but if the drug barons who run the show are untouchable, politically-correct heroes back home, there’ll always be a willing punter ready to take his or her chances.

Creative potential, not bureaucratic policies will save Kenya  31 May 2009

Every time I’m back in Kenya, as I was last week, I inevitably get drawn into a lot of fascinating discussions about the future of this country. You experience the muted enthusiasm and resilience of a people who have seen better times. Yet, the every day struggles remind you that the journey will be a long and difficult one.  

Vision 2030 comes up all the time. Having listened to numerous views about the said vision, and having looked at the various sets of targets, I can understand why much of what I’ve heard has been at best skeptical, at worst cynical. We’ve heard it all, we’ve seen it all before, it’s the Holy Grail, it’s a mirage cloaked in sheer rhetoric and unachievable promises. That’s what I hear.  

Given the record of previous regimes, it is not surprising that the general feeling is: we’ll believe it when we see it. That, in my view, poses a major credibility challenge for the dream-merchants and policy-makers. The reality is that we desperately need a vehicle to take us to the promised land, a framework within which to set out our social and economic aspirations. Previous vehicles broke down along the way, while others didn’t even get started. This one will need a lot of work, and plenty of political will, which, unfortunately, going by the shenanigans that define our politics, doesn’t inspire much confidence.  

I often hear about lessons from countries like Malaysia and South Korea. Comparisons now simply point out where opportunities were squandered. One interesting point is about the role of political leadership. And that is one area where we find something akin to common ground. Much of political leadership in Asia has been and continues to be authoritarian and paternalistic. The dear leader(s) and their political party know what’s best for you, and they’ll lay down the law, including determining how armies of employees will be mobilized.  

The South Koreans exercised this state-planning with near-militaristic precision. Working closely with investors, the regime identified strategic industries, and employees came to see themselves as an economic army, literally, an army whose target was to fight poverty and bring about industrial and economic development. They internalized the State’s vision of the future as though it was their own. They came to own it, to see themselves as a united force that could replicate the successes of Japan and do even better.  

In Kenya, without dwelling on the problems that have brought us to where we are, a couple of things are immediately observable. One, the political apparatus has always been so preoccupied with its own perpetuation that initiatives to bring about social-economic development were often an afterthought, rather than central pillars in an overarching strategy.  

Secondly, while authoritarian leadership in Asia determined how resources were to be mobilized and allocated for economic development, the Kenyan approach was to appropriate national resources for the benefit of a political elite. Against that backdrop, how can one expect any worker to identify with the visions that policy-makers are constantly dreaming up?  

I’m told that the mood has changed, that the dreams are realizable, that they’ve been drawn up by knowledgeable technocrats, and that it will be different this time. That may be so, and we must always remain optimistic. The current economic crisis will severely test this resolve. An even bigger challenge is the twin-obstacles of political ineptitude and corruption.  

The reality is that no matter how educated, professional and committed the technocracy is, at the end of the day, it operates within a political superstructure. Its effectiveness in achieving the noble goals of uplifting our people from poverty will only be as good as the politicians they work under. Good people have been frustrated and continue to be frustrated. Where talent is neither recognized nor rewarded, you cannot expect to bring the best out of people.  

The Taiwanese policy of directing educational and investment resources towards favoured, ie high-tech industries, is an interesting one. From inception it was cast within the context of a form of central-planning which had very clear goals – to turn Taiwan into a major economic power based on high-tech industries and engineering might. Our educational policy has lurched from one disastrous experiment to another.  

But as a people, we now need to change the mindsets of our people. For too long we have thought of education as the route to formal employment. The American student doesn’t grow up wanting to be employed. He/she wants to get done with formal education as soon as possible so they can run their own corporation one day. Similarly, a Chinese student wants to excel in education and acquire knowledge to enable them to be their own boss, ideally through business.  

We grow up wanting to amass certificates that we can present to the prospective employer upon graduation. Every time exam results are announced, our newspapers are full of pictures of delighted young men and women and parents celebrating their success, which is fine. But how well prepared are these young people for the future? Has their education turned them into independent thinkers and future entrepreneurs who are prepared to take risks, establish businesses, develop their talents and skills in an increasingly uncertain world? Our future critically depends on unleashing our creative spirit.

Of child actors and the tragedy of war   24 May 2009

After Slumdog Millionaire, a non-mainstream film beat the odds and won eight Oscars, the key adult actors and, understandably basking in fame and glory. For the young boys and girls who were drawn from the real slums of Mumbai, life continues pretty much as before. It’s a world of deprivation, eviction and police brutality. Occasionally, the press reports heart-rending stories about how the family of this or that child star have been evicted yet again and thrown into the streets. One man even tried to sell his daughter to escape poverty. It makes you wonder, exactly how were these kids and their families provided for?

Still on the subject of films, Chinese director Lu Chuan has discovered the depth of feeling many Chinese still harbour about the Japanese more than 70 years after the Japanese invasion. His recent film about the tragedy in which more than 300,000 were massacred has shown just how deep nationalist sentiments run. It has also shown how difficult it is to change perceptions about an invading force and reignited the anger and frustration about Japan’s refusal to face up to its barbaric past.

City of Life and Death tells the story of the massacre from a number of perspectives, including those of the invading force. It is an innovative way to explore the meaning of war from the points of view of not only the victims but also those who perpetrated the atrocities. In the process, at least in theory, the viewer gets a panoramic view of the reality of the phenomenon, thus departing from the more common victim-dominated perspective.

The challenge is that those who had first-hand experience of the atrocities will be less than willing to accept the director’s magnanimous decision to give the aggressor a voice. The aggressor is more readily cast as the villain whose villainous actions speak for themselves. The suggestion that he might have something to say about why he did what he did, thus running the risk of explaining away his actions, is anathema to the victim.

Ultimately this means that it is difficult to countenance the idea that a soldier might have been caught up in something he might not willingly have signed up for. That is not to suggest that was the case in Japanese aggression, much less to claim that a soldier is a victim of factors beyond his control. At the end of the day, an adult soldier makes very personal choices about how much pain and suffering he can inflict, for which he’ll be held accountable.

Furthermore, the slaughter of innocent civilians, including women and children is always morally reprehensible, no matter the political exigencies. Which leads one to the Tamil Tiger conflict, which the Sri Lankan authorities now claim has been brought to an end once and for all. It is not every day that government forces succeed in eliminating the threat of rebel intransigence. As we’ve seen time and time again throughout recent history, even when driven underground, rebel forces, so-called dissident groups and liberation movements continue a war of attrition for lengthy periods.  

The Tamil Tiger quest for political independence went on for twenty five years. At one point it was so bad, and so seriously threatened regional peace that India decided to step in, with predictably disastrous consequences. The Ethiopians might have wished to peruse that history carefully before invading Somalia. Or perhaps they might have looked closer to home at the way several eastern and southern African countries got embroiled like a pack of wolves in the Congolese conflict, even those like Zimbabwe which could ill afford it.

So, has peace finally come to Sri Lanka? On the face of it, the fighting might have ceased. But the unfolding human tragedy and the sheer distortion of the reality of both parties’ motives and their willingness to sacrifice innocent lives for political goals suggests that surviving the peace will be a challenge for decades to come. For those who lost their loved ones, whose entire lives were turned upside down, I can’t imagine that the silencing of guns gives much reason to celebrate right now.

When the history of the conflict is written, when films are made about rebel groups humbling government forces in guerilla warfare before succumbing to a scorched earth bombardment, some artist might wish to give voice to a teenage boy snatched away from his family and ask him what exactly he was fighting for. Will he merely regurgitate the lessons from brainwashing deep in the jungle or will he articulate a politically-sound rationale for laying his life and that of many others on the line?

Perhaps only then will the lessons of films like City of Life and Death become self-evident. That is, while the boy squeezed the trigger, lobbed bombs and lashed out with a machete, there is a bigger moral question about the motives of those who recruited him in the first place, more often than not against his will, in a conflict he probably didn’t even understand. The rehabilitation of child soldiers in places like Sierra Leone and Uganda shows just how badly damaged some of these young people can get, yet the moral questions surrounding war too often get lost somewhere in the fogs of political arguments.   

A tale of fung shui, money, ghosts and magic   17 May 2009

Every now and than a court case hits the headlines and keeps a whole community mesmerized, shocked, entertained, scandalized. There’s nothing that tantalizes more than a story of fallen giants. The O.J. Simpson case set the standard.   

Asia gets its fair share too. In China, such cases tend to involve senior politicians and bureaucrats who get done for corruption, but who also happen to be operating a string of mistresses who are usually former beauty queens and minor celebrities, and gambling state funds in casinos in Macau. In one bizarre case, a senior official conspired to have other people’s wives as his occasional mistresses, and the cuckolds got financial compensation to shut them up. Child prostitution sex rings implicating rich people and officials have been in the news lately. In a Malaysian high-profile case, a political analyst was accused of abetting the murder of a former lover in a case in which Deputy Prime Minister was adversely mentioned. The Mongolian model and interpreter was shot and her body then blown up with explosives. 

One of the most memorable cases in Hong Kong involved Nancy Kissel, an American woman who was jailed for bludgeoning to death her high-flying investment banker husband with a baseball bat after spiking his milkshake with sedatives. For weeks, gory detail after gory detail emerged about their lives, their sex life, accusations of sexual and physical abuse. It was alleged that she wanted him out of the way so she could live with a TV repair man. Perhaps she could simply have left, without having to kill her husband.  

The case gripped the territory with juicy revelations about the decadent lives of rich expats, and the catalogue of reckless mistakes that led to a swift conviction. After killing the husband, she wrapped him up in a carpet and hired some workers to carry the body away. The chaps reported ‘a strange smell’. It is not easy to dispose of a body, especially when you have to rely on hired hands and there are kids and a helper in the house who’ll be left wondering what’s happened to daddy, what’s that huge smelly thing lying in the corridor?  

The current major case is set to decide who’ll inherit the HK$100 billion left by Nina Wang, who died of cancer two years ago, aged 67. Tony Chan Chun-chuen, a former lover, claims he’s the rightful heir, and has a will to show for it. He is up against Wang’s Chinachem property empire, who also have a rival, and earlier will.  

Chinachem’s case is that Chan is just a fung shui expert who took advantage of a seriously ill woman, and that his will is a forgery, a fake will drawn up purely for fung shui purposes, and which was supposed to be burned for good luck. Mister Chan claims he had a long-lasting romantic relationship with the deceased, something her family disputes.  

Her personal assistant claims she would to send him to deliver suitcases of cash to mysterious people. Speculation is rife that these were fung shui contacts, people who would help her with her superstitions. She so strongly believed in fung shui that no one dared to contradict her or talk her out of it. She became even more superstitions after her husband was abducted for a second time in the 1990s. This time he was never found, and a body was never recovered.  

In 1999 he was declared legally dead. But Nina Wang continued to believe he was still alive, and spent a fortune trying to find him. She was involved in a ten-year legal tussle with her father-in-law who believed he had a right to his son’s fortune. Again at that time, it was a case of whose will was genuine, after her husband left a series of conflicting instructions. She actually lost and was charged with forgery. The High Court ruled in favour of the father-in-law, who enjoyed a short spell of glory before the Court of Final Appeal overturned the High Court ruling. Nina Wang was exonerated and awarded the estate.  

After being diagnosed with cancer, she continued to put her faith in magic and superstition, and didn’t believe modern medicine was of any use to her, which is ironical because their business began as a chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturer. She believed she was under a curse, and the only people who could help were fung shui masters, people who spoke the language of talismans, offerings to deities, ghosts and exorcism.  

Her billions could have secured the best medical care money could buy, anywhere in the world. But she chose the world of magic and sorcery. According to her personal assistant who served her for twenty seven years, she would have been alive today if she had put her faith in science and modern medicine rather than ‘gods and ghosts’.  

Every day, some new revelation is made in court. If it’s not about mind-boggling amounts paid to ‘buy’ good fortune, it is some aspiration to win the Nobel Prize for reconciling the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. There’ll be more to come, with fascinating details of the dreams and tribulations of someone who became Asia’s richest woman and was ranked 35^th richest person in the world.   

Nervous authorities opt for extreme measures to curb flu       10 May 2009

Are authorities over-reacting or are the measures to quarantine travelers for up to ten days reasonable? Hong Kong drew first blood when guests at the Metropark Hotel were detained for a week. To have to spend a week confined to a hotel must have felt like spell in prison, especially since none of them showed any symptoms after frequent testing.  

The Metropark was taking no chances, neither was the government which ordered the incarceration. The hotel is owned by the same people who own the Metropolis, which, in 2003 sparked off the SARS epidemic when a man who had travelled from China sneezed in the lift. The virus spread rapidly, both within the territory and across the world, as the occupants of the fateful lift went on to catch flights to various destinations.  

Guest at the Metropark started off complaining about the whole exercise, as you would expect, the lack of information, ‘bad’ food, poor service and what have you. In the course of the week, they came to put up with it, and even learned to have fun if reports of alcohol-fueled parties late into the night are to be believed. Well, what else was there to do? You have to make the best of a bad situation, and go home believing that you’ve played a noble if minor role in helping save mankind. 

Others who’ve reported placing travelers under quarantine include China, Philippines, Singapore and Brunei. China held up to fifty Mexicans who were in fact on transit to other countries, having arrived from places like the US and Canada. The Mexican authorities weren’t amused, and complained of discrimination. Their view was that the Mexicans were being confined simply because they were Mexican. Brunei confined 200 passengers who arrived from London.  

The infected Mexican man in Hong Kong had been in two taxis. One taxi driver was identified early on and sent away for a week of observation. The other chap managed to avoid ‘arrest’ for some time. Maybe he simply didn’t realize he was a wanted man. Maybe he knew alright, because a lot of information was being shared amongst taxi associations, but didn’t fancy the prospect of a week with no income. The poor fellow must have felt like a criminal being pursued by the proverbial long arm of the law. Only this time the law went around brandishing the rationale of ‘public health’.  

All of a sudden, foreign travel has assumed the frightening prospect of either contracting a disease from a fellow traveler, or being confined in a hotel or health facility on the presumption that you might have caught something that poses a danger to society. Until the virus is tamed or neutralized, these threats will remain with us for the foreseeable future.  

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Smoking in China is as normal as breathing. It is not unusual to take gift-wrapped packets of expensive cigarettes to hospital patients. The more expensive the more face you, the giver, accrue. Face is one of those cultural concepts that speak to your enhanced status in the eyes of your fellow man. The suggestion that puffing may not be in the best interest of the patient or anyone else for that matter, isn’t allowed to get in the way of an age-old ritual.  

There are 350 million smokers in China. And that’s a conservative estimate. That’s more than the entire population of eastern/central Africa, from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, to Zambia, Zimbabwe and everything in between. A recent study reported that almost 60% of all male doctors smoke. It is not clear why female doctors were not included in the study. Perhaps the news was too shocking for public consumption. Be that as it may. The central authorities decided that chain-smoking doctors didn’t really convey the appropriate health messages in a country in which a million people die of smoking-related diseases every year. To put that in perspective, that is about a third of the population of Nairobi. 

Even for those familiar with the smoking culture in China, it was a bit of shock learning that a county known as Gong’an had issued an edict ordering civil servants and teachers to smoke their way through 230,000 packs a year in order to raise tax revenues. It is the kind of thing that obscure local authorities who consider themselves to be far enough out of the reach of Beijing like to engage in. They take literally a Chinese expression that says the mountains are high and the emperor is far away. For too many bureaucrats, the emperor, ie the government might as well be on another planet.  

Take the case of a police officer who helped steal the identity of a girl from a poor rural background so his less industrious daughter could ‘earn’ a university degree and wonderful job prospects. With the help of fellow bureaucrats, he tried to put pressure on the poor girl to change her identification details so his daughter could finally assume the new, more successful identity. Sounds bizarre, but it’s not atypical. It is the kind of thing that the rich and powerful, including city chiefs at Gong’an, normally get away with until a minor news item appears in the press. Then you hear words like ‘investigations’ and ‘crackdown’.

Swine flu threatens the anticipated global economic recovery      3 May 2009

Talk of a flu pandemic brings back sad memories of SARS, the epicenter of which was Guangdong Province in China. You hid behind a mask, watching out to see who was coughing or sneezing, and surreptitiously putting some distance between yourself and the perceived threat.  

You never knew where the next infection would come from. In many parts of Asia, hygiene levels went sky-high. Washing hands constantly, wearing a mask, avoiding contact with possibly infected surfaces in public places all became second nature. Upon returning home, clothes went straight to the washing machine before whatever viruses that had landed on them during day spread across the house.  

SARS turned our lives upside down and forced people to tap into sources of creativity that they never knew they had. Some situations looked ludicrous, like a classroom full of students all wearing masks, and the person standing in front is talking through a mask. You would walk into a meeting and couldn’t tell who was talking because everyone’s face was hidden behind a mask.  

People at the pub would quickly pull down a mask in order to quaff a beer or inhale on a cigarette before replacing the veil with a triumphant glint in the eye. It was almost as if they were playing hide and seek with a pesky virus flying around the place. You could almost imagine someone saying, phew, just made it on time to avoid inhaling the bug. Media reports on the number of cases were closely watched.  

Over time, when it became clear the virus had been contained, everyone could breathe easier, literally. The masks came off, and the fear went away. Hygiene standards slipped somewhat and the world breathed a collective sigh of relief.  

Swine flu has revived those memories, making us realize yet again just how fragile the world is, and just how so interconnected we are that a virus can jump the species barrier and create diseases that were previously inconceivable. Even more scary is the speed at which they spread today. Gone are the days when vermin would take months on the high seas to spread disease from one continent to another. It’s much more efficient now, thanks to air travel.  

Even as the world struggles to come to terms with a threatened pandemic, one country has quietly chalked up a major achievement. For decades China opposed every effort by Taiwan to gain any sort of profile on the international scene, from major ones like joining world bodies like the UN to participating in diplomatic events that are open to sovereign states.  

During the SARS outbreak, Taiwan tried in vain to join WHO. China remained adamant that such a thing wouldn’t happen. Taiwan in turn maintained that being excluded from WHO denied it access to vital information for tacking the crisis. Their efforts to be recognized as part of the international community of sovereign states have been thwarted at every turn by Beijing. Until now. Taiwan has apparently secured a much-coveted invitation to the World Health Assembly in Geneva in mid-May. It doesn’t mater if they’re only going as an ‘observer’. The fact that Beijing has sanctioned it shows just how relations have improved since the Beijing-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou came into power. It is also a testimony to the power of cooperation and goodwill over hard-line belligerence and clamour for independence, the latter of which characterized the previous administration.    

WHO now says it’s too late to contain the virus globally, and it’s up to every country to limit the damage domestically. That might be easy enough for those with the economic might and sufficient medical and preventative resources. Consider that the US is looking at a possible $1.5 billion to fight the disease.   

But where does it leave struggling nations unfamiliar with and poorly equipped to tackle a real pandemic, countries that have failed to make any significant inroads into fighting curable diseases like malaria and water-borne diseases? How much can a poor African country with misplaced priorities afford to set aside for an emergency of this magnitude? 

Swine flu isn’t a new infection. Strains of it have existed for years and surfaced from time to time. There have been previous outbreaks in the US and the Philippines. Swine flu tends to respond to treatment, which is why the high mortality rate in Mexico is so worrying. It is, unfortunately, indicative of the effect a pandemic might have on a developing country. The point is, it’s not just about having money to stockpile on antivirals. It’s about disaster preparedness, having the capacity to inform, educate and mobilize people, disseminate prompt and accurate information, make smart decisions about whether and when to close schools and so forth. 

The timing is also truly unfortunate. Just when the world was holding its breath to see if the financial rescue packages being put in place will revive the global economy, there’s a threat of a global pandemic. Stock exchanges are the first to take a hit, and that is already happening.  

Airlines are also at the frontline, feeling the heat head-on, followed by global tourism, and all its associated commercial activities. If the pandemic isn’t brought under control and confidence restored, whatever recover we were hoping for will now be relegated to the back burner.