Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
crisis: the country suffered only 'collateral damage' during the financial crisis, but
this time its economy (notably tourism) was directly hit, and there was a danger
of 'total shutdown' ('the SarS outbreak—Interview: Goh chock tong, leading
the charge against SarS' 2003). Indeed, fear arose in Singapore that SarS could
provoke its worst crisis since independence in 1965. Singapore, of course, was not
the only country that worried about SarS. as a global alert had been sounded on the
disease, many travellers were avoiding asia indiscriminately, which translated to
a significant drop in tourist revenue. As thai prime minister thaksin Shinawatra
astutely noted, 'the fear of SarS is worse than SarS itself' (crampton 2003).
while concerns of economic loss were shared by leaders throughout the region,
the rapidly spreading epidemic also generated a strong sense of urgency for regional
cooperation. on 26 april, the health ministers of aSean +3 (china, Japan, and South
Korea) met in Kuala lumpur to voice their willingness to cooperate. Subsequently,
leaders from the ten aSean members attended an emergency summit in bangkok
on 29 april. the bangkok Summit was initiated by Goh chok tong, who was also
instrumental in framing the agenda. aSean became the ideal platform for discussing
this issue. According to Goh, he first called leaders of three countries—Malaysia,
thailand, and cambodia (which held the chair of aSean in 2003); once they agreed
on the necessity of having such a meeting, he called all the other aSean leaders.
Unlike previous Asian summits, which generated more rhetoric than action, the final
communiqué of the bangkok Summit stated that there was a 'collective responsibility
to implement stringent measures to control and contain the spread of SarS and
the importance of transparency in implementing these measures' (aSean 2003).
aSean members agreed that all states in the region would immediately commence
mandatory screening for SarS at their borders. the declaration further agreed on
various measures to stop SarS transmission, including:
• sharing information on the movement of people by building a SarS containment
information network;
• coordinating prevention measures by standardising health screening for all
travellers (i.e., common protocols for air, land, and sea travel) and adopting
an isolate-and-contain approach (rather than a blanket ban on travel) in SarS
control;
• establishing an
ad hoc
ministerial-level joint task force to decide on and monitor
the implementation of the decisions made at the april 2003 meeting and the
aSean+3 health ministers special meeting on SarS.
china and representatives from Hong Kong were invited that same day to attend
a follow-up summit. recognising that the cross-boundary spread of SarS posed a
common challenge to the region, chinese premier wen made it clear that the
disease could 'only be effectively countered by cooperative efforts at the regional
incentives for china to cooperate with aSean countries. before the bangkok
Summit, Chinese leaders were already under fire in Asia for orchestrating an official
