Mosquitoes or Pigs:
Which is more dangerous?

by Pahlawan Volunteers

While it is useful and important for us to wage an all out war on mosquitoes, this is the wrong occasion. For our current crisis, the Ministry's strategy is highly confusing and counterproductive. To insist on mosquitoes as a problem and JE is part of the crisis are misleading the public, farm workers and tourists. The implications and consequences:
 
 

Public
From what we know so far, the Nipah Virus is highly dangerous. The public should be kept informed and know every bit the authorities know about the virus. To this, we are thankful to the Ministry of Health as new information is shared as soon as they are learnt from the tests and experiments.  This way, the nation can be better prepared for and psychologically cope with the eventualities.

There are still a lot of unknowns associated with the NIPAH virus, as can be expected with any new virus, and NO ONE will fault our health workers or the ministry. These are worries hanging over all of us. We have yet to know the implications of the hundreds of people who suffered from Nipah and were discharged from the hospitals and the farm workers that are tested Nipah positive.  The people accept that the health ministry does not know everything. Let the public share the burden of the crisis, and be forewarned of the dangers. Malaysians are a resilient lot; they can cope with the situation.
 
 

Farm Workers
If there is an illusion about JE as conveyed by the statements made by the health minstry officials, we are afraid that farm workers will NOT take the precautions against Nipah seriously. If more farm workers come down with the virus because of their thinking that it is JE, and have NOT taken the precautions against NIPAH, who is to be blame?  We need to STOP the confusing messages. We need to be clear about the health advisory and focus on the real danger. We are concerned about the perception of the East Malaysians on the JE and Nipah problem, we dread the tragic history in Bukit Pelanduk could be repeated elsewhere.
 
 

Tourists
Our foreign friends ask us, “What is my chance of being bitten by a mosquito or coming into contact with a live pig?” The answer is pretty obvious. A large part of Malaysia’s attraction lies in our heartland, the rainforests, the mountain retreats and the outdoors. Tracks and tracks of green vegetation embrace even our most beautiful resorts, where mosquitoes abound.  The chances of any tourists being bitten by a mosquito, whatever kind, are almost certain.

If the health ministry focus so much on the Culex mosquito and the news get far and wide -- which in this age of transparency and electronic media will travel in split seconds -- it will put tourists off. The damage done to Malaysia is going to be permanent, and when nobody ever think of visiting Malaysia, our Tourism promotion efforts will just fall flat.

Perception takes a lot of time and tons of money to change, we need to be extremely careful with the messages we are sending to our people and the world. Every minute of wrong messages we send out domestically could cancel every dollar we invest internationally to promote tourism. YB Sabarrudin Chik will have a hard time explaining why the advertising overseas doesn’t work!  Those of us who are passionately engaged in the Visit Malaysia Cyber Campaign are upset by this counterproductive exercises, which has hampered our effort in promoting tourism for Malaysia.

Lastly, we learnt from our veterinarian friends, most pig farmers are JE positive and immunized against JE anyway. Even if the human victims have been tested JE positive, it doesn’t mean that it is JE that killed them. This is a very important point in helping to isolate the true cause of our crisis today.

We urge the Ministry of Health to rethink its definition of the crisis and reshape its communication strategy.

Kuala Lumpur, May 8 1999
 

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