Good communication helped S´pore beat Sars: WHO adviser

Expert praises Govt´s strategy of telling people what to expect, responding to their fears and yet not being overly reassuring

By Lee Hui Chieh

GOOD logistical planning and medical science were not the only reasons Singapore beat Sars quickly.

Effective communication was also crucial in controlling last year´s outbreak of the deadly respiratory disease.

During Sars, the Singapore authorities ´came as close as many risk communicators have seen´ to the best outbreak communication practices, said Dr Jody Lanard, a risk communication adviser to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Among the things she felt were done right: Telling people what to expect, not overly reassuring them, responding to their fears and involving them in decision-making.

Dr Lanard was among 110 epidemiologists, health officials and communication experts from around the world gathered here for a three-day meeting, which began yesterday, to help develop guidelines for good communication in fighting outbreaks.

Knowing the importance of the task, and fearing a possible influenza pandemic, the WHO will publish the guidelines to help governments by the end of this year.

In a videotaped statement to open the conference, WHO director-general Lee Jong-wook said that communication is ´as critical to outbreak control as laboratory analyses or epidemiology´, noting that ´poor outbreak communications can undermine good decisions´.

WHO communications officer Dick Thompson later told reporters: ´Often, an expert technical person might not view the risk the same way the rest of the public does, but those concerns have to be addressed.

´If the public can work co-operatively with technical experts, then you bring an end to outbreaks more quickly.´

This was what Singapore managed to achieve, said Dr Lanard at yesterday´s meeting.

For example, when the Government warned Singaporeans to be prepared for the long haul and closed schools in reaction to parents´ fears, it might have raised public anxiety, but also boosted public confidence that the leaders would be honest and would listen, she said.

This belief that they could communicate with their government made Singaporeans comply with Sars precautions, she said, citing a study published this year in the United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention´s Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Nobody in Singapore had any experience in outbreak communications when Sars emerged, confessed Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts and Health, Dr Balaji Sadasivan, when opening the conference.

But even as the authorities shaped the communication strategies, they were committed to telling it like it was.

He said: ´Honesty, accuracy and transparency must be the bedrock of any communication strategy, and our Sars experience has reinforced our belief in this.´