Kah Seng Loh - Tuberculosis – The Singapore Experience, 1867–2018

This fascinating and absorbing book by Kah Seng Loh and Li Yang Hsu is a classic in the social history of medicine. Drawing on a broad range of archival sources, including vivid patients accounts, the authors use the history of tuberculosis control in Singapore as a way to highlight key themes in the city-states social and political history, including the development of the state and the shifting lines of social and economic inequality. This book will be of interest to scholars of health and society around the world as a richly detailed case study that is sure to illuminate wider comparisons. As a collaboration between a social historian and a physician who specializes in infectious disease, it is also a model of interdisciplinary scholarship.

Sunil Amrith, Harvard University

Through a rich account of tuberculosis in Singapore from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, this book charts the relationship between disease, society and the state, outlining the struggles of colonial and postcolonial governments to cope with widespread disease and to establish effective public health programmes and institutions. Beginning in the nineteenth century when British colonial administrators viewed tuberculosis as a racial problem linked to the poverty, housing and insanitary habits of the Chinese working class, the book goes on to examine the ambitious medical and urban improvement initiatives of the returning British colonial government after the Second World War. It then considers the continuation and growth of these schemes in the postcolonial period and explores the most recent developments, which include combating the resurgence of TB and the rise of antimicrobial resistance. Throughout, the book highlights the special difficulties of Singapore as an open port city with a large multicultural population, discusses the development of specific government and non-governmental institutions (especially the Singapore Anti-Tuberculosis Association), and describes peoples varied experiences, responses and resistance to the disease.

Kah Seng Loh is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia

Li Yang Hsu is Head of the Infectious Diseases Programme at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore.

For a full list of available titles please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-the-Modern-History-of-Asia/book-series/MODHISTASIA

Disease, Society and the State

Kah Seng Loh and Li Yang Hsu

First published 2020

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2020 Kah Seng Loh and Li Yang Hsu

The right of Kah Seng Loh and Li Yang Hsu to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-35453-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-33144-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Our book, written by a historian and a physician both from the small island city-state of Singapore in Southeast Asia, attempts to combine the disciplines of history and medicine. Forward-looking and successful in many ways, Singapore is nevertheless grappling with the difficult issue of tuberculosis like many countries around the world. Like these countries, Singapore also has a long and largely uncharted history of tuberculosis and tuberculosis control.

We would like to thank the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, for providing invaluable support and funding for the research that made this book possible through the Infectious Diseases Programme grant. The programme aims to improve the understanding of infectious diseases in Singapore and the region, and ultimately to mitigate their impact by conducting rigorous research that can be translated into public health policies and practices. The support for the book, amid the programmes current priorities, recognises the role of history towards achieving these goals.

In particular, we would like to express our appreciation and gratitude to the following persons from the school: Prof Kee Seng Chia, Prof Yik Ying Teo, Ms Ai Li Quake, Ms Po Jan Chen, Ms Zunairah binti Lukman, and Ms Sharon Lee. We also wish to thank the staff of the Singapore Tuberculosis Elimination Programme and Tuberculosis Control Unit, who continue to work towards the elimination of the threat of tuberculosis from Singapore.

Documenting the history of tuberculosis has taken us to the archives and more broadly to social memory. We are grateful to the National Archives of Singapore for facilitating our research, particularly Mr Eric Chin, Ms Fiona Tan, Ms Gayathri Kaur Gill, and Ms Abigail Huang, and to our research assistants, Ms Zihan Loo, Ms Vaani Parameshwari Kiran Chaudhari, Mr V.P. Vishnu Prasad, Ms Teresa Barre, Ms Siti Nurain, Ms Dafina Kajtazi, and Ms Valentina Jokic.

We learned much from conversations and discussions academic and otherwise with various people, including Dr Nicholas White, Dr Tony Webster, Dr Barry Doyle, Dr Alistair Martyn Chew, Prof Paul Anantharajah Tambyah, Dr David Allen, Dr Anita Lundberg, Mr Edmund Arozoo, Dr Heong Hong Por, Mr Yoong How Hsien, Ms Nur Sakinah Rahmat, Mr Harbhajan Singh, Ms Meeravathy, Dr Keng We Koh, Dr Kai Khiun Liew, Mr Joo Teng Teh, Mr Dan Feng Tan, Dr Guo-Quan Seng, Dr Geoffrey Pakiam, Mr Michael Yeo, and Mr Alex Tan.