IN JAKARTA

WHEN Sars first hit Singapore in February 2003, several of my colleagues and I moved out of our office in Toa Payoh to operate at different premises so that if there was an outbreak at our headquarters, the newsroom would not be crippled.

I was posted to our Jurong plant office for three weeks before moving to the Genting Lane office for another two months. It was fun working from other premises as you would be away from the prying eyes of your superiors.

We were asked to take the necessary precautions such as keeping personal hygiene and monitoring our body temperature with our company-issued thermometers.

Now with the threat of swine flu - or Influenza A - looming, the same arrangement is being worked out with my colleagues divided into teams to work from different premises.

Is this an over reaction? I don't think so. It is always better to take the precaution than to regret later when there is a pandemic.

But back in Jakarta which has been my home the past five years, I don't get the feeling that the swine flu outbreak is looming large in the country.

When the World Health Organization (WHO) raised its alert level last weekend, officials here downplayed the threat, as they had done way back in 2004 when the Avian Flu virus hit the poultry population.

It was only after the virus claimed its first victim when a civil servant and his two young daughters died of the disease in July 2005 that the government set up an agency to prevent a pandemic.

Even after having the agency, Indonesia is the country with the highest number of avian flu human fatality in the world.

In the outbreak of the H1NI virus in Mexico and the United States, Indonesians were made to believe that only pork eaters would be vulnerable to the H1N1 virus while the rest of the mainly Muslim population would be safe from the disease.

Even the health Minister, Dr Siti Fadilah Supari, only urged Indonesians to be vigilant and not to panic because the fatality rate of the new flu was only 6 per cent compared to the far deadlier bird flu's 80 per cent.

And she surprisingly said that the virus thrives in countries with four seasons, and not in tropical Indonesia.

Only when WHO raised the alert to level 5, which means a pandemic is imminent, did the authorities start taking measures to prevent that from happening in the country.

Officials have since pointed out that non-pork eaters are just as vulnerable to the disease as their pork eating friends because the virus can be transmitted from human to human.

The new flu may find Indonesia a cozy place for the virus to roost, as far as hygiene is concerned.

This is because hygiene in pig pens is just as bad as in the chicken coop in the backyard of many Indonesian homes.

To be fair, the government has done its part in educating the people about the importance of cleanliness and the need to move backyard farms away from population centres.

But in a vast archipelagic country like Indonesia, it remains a daunting task to carry out the preventive measures that health officials have thought out in preventing a pandemic.

The good thing is that, because of the special agency on bird flu, Indonesia is better prepared.

The hope is that officials would take this new outbreak as seriously as they have done for bird flu.