PUTRAJAYA, 1 July 2009: Thirty-eight new Influenza A(H1N1) cases, comprising 33 imported cases and five local transmissions, were reported today, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 196.
Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said out of the 38 cases, 30 involved Malaysians, five Indonesians, and a Swede, Palestinian and Argentinean.
He said the locally infected cases involved three students of Sekolah Menengah Tsun Jin, Jalan Loke Yew Cheras, Kuala Lumpur.
Currently, 86 patients were still receiving treatment for H1N1, and 110 patients had recovered from the disease, he added.
Liow said two schools — Sekolah Menengah Tsun Jin Cheras, Kuala Lumpur, and Sekolah Tinggi Chung Hwa, Seremban — remained close due to the pandemic. — Bernama
Eric Lim says
The Power of Words
The Malaysian public is generally highly sensitive to matters connected with race and religion. This is of course widely reflected in the language issues as mentioned in my previous post in this blog. This is rightly so, as Heidegger did say that “Language is the House of Beingâ€.
It is therefore not surprising that the “inappropriate†choice of words could cause wide-spread uneasiness in Malaysian society, particularly in the current fight against the global spread of Influenza A(H1N1) (officially designated by the WHO) or selsema babi (pig or swine flu in Malay) officially designated by the Malaysian Information Ministry (so-called official version).
As the official religion in Malaysia is Islam, the word “babi†(pig or swine) is therefore highly sensitive. Frequent utterance of the word, especially in the so-called official channels such as government TV stations etc., is certainly beyond logic or common sense.
To use the term “selsema babi†is certainly adopting a local perspective … too local in the context of the global spread of the disease. The global and officially sanctioned term is “Influenza A(H1N1)â€. That is rightly the global perspective.