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Singapore on hygiene blitz after SARS

By Jason Szep

SINGAPORE, July 03 (Reuters) - After dragging on a cigarette at Singapore's busy Bugis shopping district, Rafiz bin Sulaiman coughed and spat on the ground.

Seconds later, Singapore authorities swooped on the smartly dressed 20-year-old. Spitting has long been a fineable offense in the tightly controlled island state. But in the era of SARS, it is an even greater social evil.

Desperate to ward off the deadly respiratory virus, undercover police have nabbed more than 80 people for spitting since May when the government began a nationwide "Singapore's OK" campaign to improve public hygiene.

Sulaiman, who drives jeeps and other vehicles in the Singapore army, was fined S$500 ($290).

Others have been publicly shamed in addition to fines, their photographs splashed on the front page of the government-linked Straits Times national newspaper.

"What is done cannot be undone," Sulaiman sighed after pleading guilty and paying his fine at a downtown courthouse.

Enforced by undercover officers, the crackdown is part of a massive cleaning of one of Asia's most meticulously kept cities to prevent the sort of relapse of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome seen in Toronto in May.

The U.N.'s World Health Organization took Singapore off its list of SARS-affected regions on May 31, ending a devastating three-month epidemic that killed 32 out of 206 sufferers in the island republic of four million people.

The WHO says SARS is fading globally but could prove impossible to destroy. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the cold winter months of winter could revive of the virus, much like past flu epidemics.

Singapore, its image sullied and economy strained near recession by the outbreak, is taking no chances. Recent weeks have seen a spate of hygiene campaigns and health controls that remind residents daily to stay fit and clean to fight the bug.

Health officials fear a scenario where one sick visitor brings the virus into the country, evading elaborate fever checks at air and sea borders and setting off an explosive outbreak.

FEARING RELAPSE

"We can't assume that it's all going to be OK," said Tan Chorh Chuan, director of medical services at the Ministry of Health. "The virus may survive in colder, drier climates and therefore, in winter conditions there may be a surge of cases," Tan added.

"Whether that will happen nobody really knows. This will be the first winter."

Under "Singapore's OK", thousands of workers at food stalls and construction sites wait in line twice a day for temperature readings, nearly two months after Singapore's last known local SARS infection.

In "Cool Singapore", a separate campaign run by the Tourism Board, staff at more than 100 hotels get their ears probed twice daily by digital thermometers. Healthy workers sport blue stickers, worn like badges, declaring themselves fever free.

Posters at bus stops and subway stations exhort citizens to wash their hands or avoid sharing food, while leaflets dropped in mailboxes trumpet the benefits of regular temperature checks.

Behaviour improvement campaigns are frequent in this autocratic city-state. Between 1958 and 1995, more than 200 such campaigns urged better ways of living - from being punctual, to eating more wheat, planting trees and speaking better English.

They don't always reach their mark. A survey in 1985 reported in the Straits Times newspaper found that four in 10 respondents could not name a single campaign without prompting.

Singapore's quest for cleanliness dates back to 1967, two years after independence from Malaysia, when the government drew up a plan to transform the island into a "clean" city, making tidiness a national priority second only to defense and economic progress.

BROAD CAMPAIGN

But the latest blitz on hygiene in the aftermath of SARS is one of the broadest.

Toilets are now rated in a new five-star system similar to that used for hotels. Under the "Happy Toilet" program, plaques bearing star ratings began appearing outside Singapore's 29,000 public loos from this week.

"These are extraordinary measures in extraordinary times," said Lam Peng Er, a researcher at the East Asia Institute. "But the measures are taken with the backdrop of the SARS epidemic. It's draconian, no doubt, but it is effective."

In just over a month, police have booked 258 people for littering.

The measures echo Singapore's tough response when SARS first erupted. It was the first nation to shut all schools and announce a mass quarantine, isolating about 8,000 residents and installing Web-linked cameras in their homes to keep them there.

Most residents support the tough-love approach, and say they feel relieved their government tries to shield them from disease.

But one recent campaign, a mass culling of the city's 80,000 stray cats following evidence of SARS in animals such as civet cats and raccoon dogs in China, provoked rare public outrage. The government backed down a little. Instead of rounding up and killing all stray cats, authorities began auctioning land for animal shelters. But, as an added precaution, culling would continue, they said.

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