Time to forge a lasting legacy of cleanliness
Lessons learned from the Sars crisis in 2003 may well be why we have so far escaped a local outbreak of swine flu, despite the confirmed case of a Mexican visitor. One lesson that has been quickly remembered is the importance of cleanliness and hygiene in preventing the spread of viruses. It was good to see government ministers out and about yesterday launching a new campaign to clean up the city.
These scenes revived memories of Team Clean, a major public health initiative in the aftermath of the Sars experience. Headed by Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, then chief secretary, the team's aim was to make Hong Kong Asia's cleanest city. It functioned for nine months until Mr Tsang moved on to head a task force on political reform.
Team Clean achieved a lot in a short time, more than doubling fines for public littering and spitting; disinfecting hundreds of residential buildings and hygiene black spots; cracking down on restaurants, food hawkers and market stallholders who had failed to meet required standards; and tightening hygiene rules for public housing tenants.
When it was disbanded, however, the driving force of its co-ordinating role was lost, opening the door to complacency and fragmentation in the war on filth. Swine flu has been a rude reawakening, as evidenced by heightened precautions such as disinfection of public places and emphasis on personal hygiene.
For a time, it appeared that Team Clean had achieved real progress towards the goal of making Hong Kong the region's cleanest city. It is regrettable therefore that in a world living not only with the fear of a flu pandemic, but with drug resistant bacteria and mosquito-borne diseases, we do seem to have forgotten some of the hard lessons. While Hong Kong is undoubtedly cleaner, it is still not clean enough. This time the government needs to find a mechanism for sustaining the momentum of the clean-up.
Black spots highlighted by Team Clean and the media included back alleys that had been turned into makeshift kitchens and light-wells filled with litter and raw sewage. Clean-up efforts and greater awareness resulting from the campaign led to improvements that, unfortunately, have often proved temporary. Hygiene standards in restaurants in many neighbourhoods still leave much to be desired.
The lesson here is the need for sustained follow-up, enforced by tougher laws if necessary. Such intrusive regulation is sensitive, given that this city treasures personal freedom, but that does not mean that community health risks should go unchecked. Stepped-up cleaning measures by the MTR and bus companies are welcome, but they raise the question of what the government is doing to enforce hygiene on minibuses.
If something good has come out of the swine flu alert, it is that cleanliness and personal hygiene are not just something to get serious about for a while after a disease outbreak. They remain the community's first line of defence in a world that faces the threat of a flu pandemic sooner or later.
