SARS

If you read the papers, Singapore is commemorating the 10^th Anniversary of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) occurrence here. This brought back some memories of my time in TTSH as a staff in 2003. I was then under the employ of TTSH as an Operation Manager (Clinical Ops, Outpatient Services) in the Department of Infectious Diseases. Yes, I was right smack in the middle of it all.

One of my responsibilities was management of the Travelers’ Health and Vaccination Clinic in TTSH, the largest vaccination clinic in Singapore by volume. I still remember at that time there was the bird flu situation in China and so we at the clinic monitors the news feed closely for development of the situation in China closely as one of the services provided by the clinic was travel advice for people coming for vaccination.

During that time, we encounter all sorts of people who come to clinic for vaccination and advice. Prior to WHO declaring the SARS pandemic, I still remember families who came to the clinic asking about vaccinations for bird flu or what we know about the “new” flu as they had booked and paid for holidays to China. It was difficult managing these groups of people because there was really scant information available at that time and how do you then provide “proper” advice.

When SARS as “SARS” was announced and TTSH became the designated SARS hospital and we went into a kind of lock-down mode, I was assigned to CDC (Communicable Disease Centre) to provide operational support and there I stayed for 8 weeks. It was take the train to work in the morning and take the train home in the evening. Outside of work, there were zero social activities, no church and no unnecessary interactions. It was alright because it is a small sacrifice to keep Singapore safe. The only “bad” experience that came out of it was that I did not get to interact with my god-daughter who was very young at that time and by the time the self-quarantine was over and when I saw my god-daughter again, she refused to let me carry her. It was a sad moment but not anymore as she had grown up and still acknowledges this “god-pa”.

The nastiest experience during the 8 weeks was when an American girl was sent to CDC for quarantine and observation because she had developed a fever. She was sent to CDC accompanied by her parents. The girl was terrified as she had never been hospitalised and will be “isolated”. The father kept asking when they will know if their daughter will be alright and when they will get the call with information about their daughter’s condition to which the nurses replied that they will call the family as soon as they have information. This was obviously not sufficient for the father and he ranted that his daughter has not been away from them alone before and that he works for a big American firm (while pointing a finger at my face) and I was specifically threaten with lawsuit from his firm’s lawyer if anything untoward happened to his daughter. Here we are fighting a pandemic and the doctors, nurses, support staff and myself are putting our life on the line and I get threaten with a lawsuit! Such is the indulgence on individual rights over community rights and anyway, I would not know who the dude is going to sue if he does sue especially since he did not ask for my name but I was wearing my name tag and I was wearing a mask that might make recognition an issue.

I am proud of my contribution to TTSH and Singapore no matter how small that contribution might be. My name was not listed in the commemorative book published by TTSH the year after as I had left the employ of TTSH and so did my immediate operational boss and so there was no verifiable source of my participation in the SARS epidemic. If there is any consolation, in the book, there was a picture of me with CDC’s nurse manager and senior nurses during one of the morning’s briefing.

Here’s to all the Healthcare workers in Singapore, generally an underappreciated group of people.