SARS in Singapore—challenges of a global health threat to local institutions

SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) has been declared by WHO (World Health Organisation) as a global health threat. Within a period of four to five months in 2003, the disease infected some 8,000 people in more than 25 countries and left 774 dead. The many studies that have been done on the spread of SARS in Asia as well as countries as far flung as Germany and Canada have focused on the global dimension of the infectious disease as well as the speed of its spread upon emergence in southern China and then Hong Kong. Less attention has been paid to its spatial distribution at the national and local scales. This discussion focuses on the spread of SARS at the national and local spatial scales. In the process, the study presents the management of a hazard, in this case, an emerging infectious disease by national health care institutions such as the hospitals that ultimately proved to have been wholly unprepared for coping with at least the health aspects of the outcome of a globalised national agenda for growth and economic progress.