Financial Journalist

Wine & Spirit International October 1999

For all the sabre rattling, intra-EU duty free has ended not with a bang, but a whimper. Gerard O’Kane reports on the uneasy silence in travel retail lounges

The EU can hardly have been unaware of the possible effects of the end of European duty free. Some of Europe’s biggest companies, backed by an army of hastily-assembled but well-financed ‘research companies’, warned of the end of civilisation as we knew it: there would be thousands in the unemployment lines and national industries would crumble, while the narrow-eyed, thin lipped advisors of the EU, led by Mario Monti, looked on at their dream’s culmination.

Since the abolition of duty free within the EU, which came into force on 1 July 1999, the hyperbole has ceased. The whining from the engines of power within the British Airport Authority (BAA) has stopped, the ferries still run and there have, as yet, been no job losses.

At least that is the story being put around by the EU and the press. In actual fact, the truth is somewhere between the apocalypse and utopia.

The abolition of duty free is forcing companies to create new marketing strategies in airports and on ferries. But there is no escaping the ferry routes that have been axed, the brand names being subsidised, that airport charges are on the increase or that ticket prices are set to rise.

The UK was expected to be one of the countries worst affected. But few job losses have been reported as yet, and there seems not to have been hikes in ferry or airline ticket prices. All of which is surprising, since the figures published prior to abolition pointed to a catastrophe.

A survey by research company Euromonitor estimated abolition would bring about the loss of 127,000 jobs.

It pointed out that intra-EU sales accounted for over 70% of the EU duty free market. The European Travel Research Foundation (ETRF - an industry-supported research company) estimated that the airline, airport and ferry duty free market was worth US$5.6 billion, or 52% of global duty free sales.

So what has happened since this cash cow was led to the abattoir? Publicly the same answer keeps coming up.

“To be perfectly honest the answer is no-one yet knows,” says Quentin Rapoport, director with the UK’s Wine and Spirits Association (WSA). “We do see the drinks market a key one for ferry companies although in the airline business there are other factors. But so far no-one seems to have drawn any conclusions.”

Under the new EU rules governing for ferry companies, operators can sell goods with the duty paid at the same rates as one of the countries it is leaving or at which it is arriving. But it can only do so while it is in that nation’s territorial waters.

This ruling has created several problems: confusion among the passengers, (a similar confusion among some airlines), a reduction in the attractiveness of traditional duty free goods, primarily spirits, and the virtual disappearance of cheap booze sales on certain routes.

As Richard Stocks of the UK Duty Free Confederation mused, will the ferry companies be able to sell enough in the 20 or so minutes a cross-channel boat remains in French waters to make it worth their while stocking it?

“As for the airlines, it seems they are no longer selling tobacco or alcohol,” says Stocks. “There’s confusion about the laws when there’s stopovers or refuelling.”

Lower duties
The cheaper duty-paid countries of Spain, Holland, France, Greece and Italy, meanwhile, look like being able to hold on to some profit from the duty abolition. Certainly Stocks sees it coming at the expense of trade traditionally done by UK firms, a view supported by the WSA’s Rapoport, who points out that over 10% of all wine now purchased for UK consumption now comes from across the channel.

But the duty paid issue is not even as straight forward as low rates good, high rates bad. Greece and Italy, for instance, both have low rates of duty on wines, yet seem to have been hit pretty hard. “It is important to realise that 75% of our duty free sales were to other EU people,” says Tomas Tsourinakis, treasurer of the Hellenic Tax and Duty Free Association. “In July, we saw a 70% drop in spirit sales.”

Still, though it is hard to pinpoint the trends that are driving the figures. Even though the Greek association is one of the few which had solid figures for July, Tsourinakis is careful with interpretation.

“It was confused month, many tourists did not even enter the shops, not understanding they could buy good value duty-paid goods,” he points out. And the difficulties do not end there. Because of national law some ferries running between Italy and Greece cannot even sell duty-paid goods; that requires new permits.

While most in the industry officially claim that it is too early to say what the ultimate effect of abolition will be, privately, the consensus is that the whisky, gin, vodka and Cognac markets will be the worst affected. Figures from the ETRF indicate that the scotch industry alone could lose £136 million and Cognac producers are unlikely to be sleeping any easier.

“My feeling is that the areas most vulnerable are the premium products; people tend to trade up when buying duty free,” concludes John Wakely, European drinks analyst with Lehman Brothers.

Logic would suggest trading up is bound to be affected. Right across the EU the duty on spirits is much higher than other beverages, and the attraction for ferry companies or airport outlets to hold spirits now that they are duty-paid will obviously be reduced.

“The question to be asked is did duty free cause you to drink more or is it a replacement market?” says Wakely. “There have been no studies on this but my feeling is that it created additional volume.”

With financial inducements removed, why should the consumer buy that better brand of whisky or gin? For a start it may not be on the shelves any more, but if it is, the chances are that it costs so much more than wine, for example, or standard spirits within that category, that trading up could be wiped out at a stroke of Monti’s ideological pen.

According to ETRF figures whisky, has a price elasticity of -1.9, meaning that a 10% increase in price would result in a 19% reduction in consumption. Whisky accounted for 27.8% of EU duty free liquor sales; cognac was next at 8.8%.

And those running the shops admit that spirits sales will plummet. “With duty free gin cost about FF90 - now it would be F180; I don’t even keep it in the shops any more,” says Bob van Tussenbroek, general sales manager at Charles de Gaulle airport.

Van Tussenbroek has reopened four of his 17 duty free shops to handle duty-paid goods for intra-EU travellers. He makes no secret of the fact that the new outlets differ from traditional duty free shops.

“We’ve seen a drop in revenues but we think we can get them back after six months. We need publicity to get people used to the idea of duty paid,” he says.

But his product line has changed as well. Because he is selling products at French duty paid prices, he concentrates on products that will have a much lower price than in many other European Union states.

“Things like schnapps are more expensive than Germany, but our sales of wine, champagne and cognac are working very well,” he boasts.

In part van Tussenbroek says he can achieve success by marketing the products better than in the past. Playing the heritage card - ‘take of piece of France home’ sort of thing. But he admits it has been at the cost of choice.

“We have very few foreign spirits on the shelves now,” he admits. “We’re more likely to keep the odd 25 year old spirit.”

Less success
What is apparent is a difference in how Charles de Gaulle airport has handled the new situation and how the British Airports Authority has managed.

As had happened with some of the larger ferry firms, the BAA had been preparing for duty free abolition before it happened. It formed World Duty Free, moving into the US duty free market and with a company large enough to force better prices from manufacturers. Like some ferry routes, the BAA swallowed the price increases on alcohol, at least for now.

At the same time it won the duty free concession on Eurotunnel (the rail link between the UK and continental Europe). Though it is estimated that Eurotunnel will lose £100m a year from abolition, the BAA consortium is studying ways to retain retail sales and is increasing retail sales area by 15% throughout its airports.

Paradoxically, while most were wringing their hands and mourning the death of duty free, the BAA announced increased profits. But this increase was in part due to increased passenger numbers from low cost airlines such as EasyJet and having done the maths for the coming year it obviously expects revenue to fall.

In the last week of July it announced a hike in landing fees at its seven airports.

“These price hikes are also happening at Copenhagen and Dublin and more are likely to follow,” says Wendy O’Conner at the Airports Council International (Europe). “It is even worse for regional airports where we estimate that up to 60% of their revenues came through duty free.”

According to O’Conner, each airport has their own strategy to deal with the losses but all seem to be keeping their cards close to their chest. Most are surely hoping tat new marketing techniques, specialist shops and fashion might save retail income. Even so, O’Conner expects airport redundancies early next year.

One possible light at the end of what is otherwise a pretty dark tunnel could be the French moves to create ‘espace voyageur’. Still in early days of planning, the French have put forward an idea which would see areas in airports and ferries where a pre-agreed EU-wide duty rate could be charged.

Given EU politics, it seems likely that such a scheme will run into objections from other member states, but as the question of travel prices and redundancies become more transparent, political pressure may push doubters into finding a solution.

According to Sue Kirk with Stena, the ferry line already had to make 600 people redundant by closing a Scandanavian route. And from Autumn it will reduce services to concentrate on freight. “We’re also absorbing some of the price increases on certain lines but we don’t bother selling tobacco any more,” says Kirk.

While the nature of duty paid between the UK and Ireland remains a problem, the company is selling goods to Holland and France at their national rates. “We’re looking for lower margin but higher volume sales,” she says.

In terms of new marketing, Kirk says the company is reviewing refurbishing the ships and the need for encouraging a better level of retail services. For Stena duty free contributed to about 28% of revenues.

For P&O services from the UK to northern Spain there is no talk of redundancies nor price increases, but the routes of Scandanavian Seaways, now known as DFDS Seaways, routes have seriously been hit. “In February we closed the Harwich/Gothenborg route and we’re looking at 10-15% increase in ticket prices,” explains John Crummie, DFDS managing director.

DFDS, however, has gone further than many others to offset the losses of duty free, reducing its commission to travel agents and setting up a new route to Gothenburg via Norway, where the company can still sell duty free.

“We are seeking to increase the volume of passengers, use new retail concepts. I believe that there hasn’t been enough creative imagination in overcoming the loss of duty free,” argues Crummie. He does concede, however, that the company “can never hope to replace that level of profit from duty free”.

The fact remains the effect of the abolition of duty free is yet to be felt. Ferry services will close and indigenous spirit industries will suffer.

Traditional days out such as German “butter boat tours” have disappeared. Airline ticket prices will increase and regional airports may disappear.

It may not be quite the disaster scenario predicted by an industry desperate to keep a big-earning sector, but it’s not a pretty picture either. Only time will tell just how bad it is.

Europe, duty free, regulations, change

WINDOW September 13, 1996

Arts on the fringe

By Gerry O’Kane

HONG KONG has entered a vicious circle familiar the world over: costly productions fail to draw sustainable box office receipts, and more public funding is needed for activities that seem to attract fewer people.

The arts world is casting about for a strategy that will both enrich the lives of people in the territory and excite popular support. At the heart of the issue are the twin problems of funding and education. A small number of arts groups take the dragon’s share of available resources, but that does not guarantee public interest in their activities. And why should people be interested when our schools and colleges seem to consider the arts a side-issue at best, a waste of time at worst?

Is there enough local interest in arts? Reading the weighty papers published in the past six months by various funding authorities reveals yes/no answers at every turn — perhaps unsurprising for a community that grew in size and wealth very quickly. Add to that a clutch of different bureaucracies all trying to figure out what artists themselves want and it is not difficult to see why gauging the level of community interest is difficult.

Planning documents fly thick and fast. The Hong Kong Arts Development Council recently published its five-year strategic plan. And just last month the Urban Council brought out its five-year consultation paper.

Both reflect the same concerns. Indeed, detailed reading shows cross-subsidies going to the largest artistic groups, leaving many smaller music and drama groups scraping the bottom of the money barrel. And there are apparent contradictions: while halls for major performances are in short supply, figures show rehearsal venues run by both the urban and regional councils are underused. And even with rental subsidies, arts groups find venues too expensive and difficult to book. Yet the Academy of Performing Arts, which has world-class facilities, is shown to be standing idle most of the time.

While it is not within Urbco’s remit to concentrate on arts education, its report passingly mentions the need for education to instill an appreciation of the arts. It also speaks of preserving and promoting traditional arts and of the importance of popularization. The HKADC Arts Education Policy Paper, pulling no punches, says “attitudinal barriers to the understanding of, and appreciation for, the arts means that the arts are at best marginalised or at worst ignored.”

Newly-incumbent HKADC chairman Vincent Chow Wing-shing at first indicated an interest in being interviewed but subsequently declined.

Oscar Ho, a former HKADC member and director of the Hung Kong Arts Centre’s arts education, was an author of the five-year plan. “You have to remember Hong Kong is really a city of refugees or children of refugees and as such there is a preoccupation with making money — and art is not seen as necessary.” That explains why this city of 6 million has yet to spawn a commercial theatre, he says. His prescription for getting things moving calls for vastly expanded arts programmes in schools and the introduction of professional programmes for what he calls “middlemen.”

By Ho’s definition, middlemen are the curators, critics, teachers and administrators — the people side of the arts community’s infrastructure. Right now, Hong Kong has no training for any of these professionals. He says, not unreasonably, that generating home-grown talent is vital for nurturing public interest in the arts. Equally, he argues, middlemen are crucial to the artistic community, organising performances and exhibitions and managing venues better. “Why doesn’t Sha Tin run a season of Cantonese opera?” Ho asks. Answer: Sha Tin lacks middlemen.

Noel Ran, manager of the popular Gallery Seven, also worries about education. Most people, he says, simply don’t care about visual arts. “Ho is right about curators and administrators — there is no training for them here.” In another vein, he says: “While young artists can’t find anywhere to exhibit, there are miles of civic centre walls lying bare.”

Specialists
Although the HKADC has its arts education working group within the Education Department, no one has come up with a solution for training art specialists — or finding enough schoolteachers to fill positions. Amazingly, Ho asserts that no art subjects are recognised as credits in the admissions criteria for university entrance in Hong Kong. And, singling out paragraph 44 of the HKADC’s education report, he says that sorry situation is unlikely to change very soon. Notes the report: “At present teachers, parents and principals are quite reluctant to focus on the arts.”

Benny Chia, director of the Fringe Club and a member of the HKADC, agrees that education is important but argues that schooling has become too competitive for students to venture far from traditional career choices. “It’s a sort of rat race,” he says. What Hong Kong really needs is a less stressed-out environment, Chia reckons. “First, we need a healthy community.”

Ho agrees that this is the key. “I feel the community needs to appreciate art, especially if it’s to develop in regard to public bodies,” he says. In other words, if the community at large does not demand more in the way of arts activities, it will be increasingly difficult for bodies like the HKADC and Urbco to funnel money to projects taxpayers care little about. For the moment, funding agencies continue to struggle in this vacuum of apparent public apathy. Both Urbco and the HKADC keep calling for more cash from government to support groups, especially those dependent on heftier subsidies.

At the same time, they have been calling for more private sponsorship. But for all that, the HKADC concedes there is not much hope of raising cash commercially. Urbco mentions it only with regard to Chinese opera productions, which tend to garner good attendance numbers, and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, which claimed a 74 per cent attendance record last year.

Neither Ho nor Chia see commercial sponsorship as feasible, except in the case of Chinese opera. Oddly enough, the HKADC views developing and preserving Chinese opera as entirely dependent on grants from government, according to its own report. Chia argues that it is impractical for performers to find corporate sponsorship. “Big companies here are just not used to sponsoring the arts,” he says.

Chinese firms traditionally focus on the practical, sponsoring projects like hospitals, according to Ho, though he concedes that local companies show a growing interest in Chinese opera. The big corporate arts funders have been foreign multinationals. But Ho says their interest in Hong Kong is not what it used to be. “This foreign corporate sponsorship has been affected by the [maturing business] market in Hong Kong — and China has taken a fair amount away,” he says. The long and short of it is, if the Hong Kong general public is not interested in attending performances, companies figure they are poor vehicles for promoting corporate identity and products.

The thought of leaving government funding for corporate sponsorship gives Stephen Jefferies the shivers. The Hong Kong Ballet’s artistic director says bluntly: “We simply couldn’t survive on sponsorship, nor on the money taken from performances.”

The company is one of the five performance groups supported by the HKADC. “If we didn’t have that subvention we’d be in trouble,” he says.

Over 1994/95, the Hong Kong Ballet managed average attendances of 75 per cent at Urbco venues. In other years, numbers have dipped below that, and the company has tried to boost them by focusing on school visits to drum up interest. Sounding very much the strategist, Jefferies says the company is always careful to identify “the correct product” to attract interest. Well regarded as the Hong Kong Ballet is, do such groups get an unfairly large slice of the pie? Looking at figures from Urbco, it is difficult to know. By its own admission, it began supporting the arts in the 1970s but “has not yet had the opportunity to consolidate, analyse and review its policies in detail.”

Grants:
Its five-year consultation document offers masses of statistical information but much of it seems open to wide interpretation. For example, it shows cash grants to the Hong Kong Ballet in 1994/95 totalling $4.7 million; it also indicates that of the five shows the group performed in Urbco venues that year, it received subsidies averaging 56 per cent of production costs in at least three instances — money drawn from the 16 per cent of Urbco’s cultural budget set aside for cultural presentations and festivals, to which all arts groups, outside of the big five subverted organisations, must turn for support. (The ballet also received $12.68 million from the HKADC.)

Not that the ballet should be singled out: statistical anomalies, or at least question marks, arise for every group supported by the HKADC and Urbco. What role the Regional Council played in funding is even less certain: its loosely documented annual report for 1995/96 says the council put on 579 cultural presentations, reporting that $437 million was spent on “cultural and entertainment and festivals activities.”

The HKADC supports a total of six professional companies and an information centre. Most of the companies were inherited from the HKADC’s predecessor, the Council for the Performing Arts. The six are the Chung Ying Theatre Co, Exploration Theatre, HK Arts Festival Society, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, City Contemporary Dance, Hong Kong Ballet and the Hong Kong Arts Resource and Information Centre. Each receives year-round support grants, which in 1994/95 totalled $40.2 million, or 59 per cent of the HKADC budget. Those grants do not include extras like project grants for $130,000 to Chung Ying and another $100,000 to the City Contemporary Dance Group.

All of these performing groups also received support from Urbco, and possibly the Regional Council.

Urbco has a lot on its plate: the Chinese Orchestra, the Hong Kong Dance Company, the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre. It also supports the Hong Kong Philharmonic, to the tune of $60.3 million in 1995/96.

Altogether, these groups account for 33 per cent of Urbco’s cultural budget for 1995/96. Another 42 per cent of cultural budget goes under the heading “civic centres” (which can run from managing and maintanence to building costs). There are additional budget items for a film archive, music office and operations. But the clincher, again, is the “cultural presentations and festivals” category, accounting for 16 per cent of the budget.

This is where all other artistic groups turn for support. But it is also where the big subverted operations can go for an extra dip. So for those outside Hong Kong’s six major arts companies, there is little meat left on the bone.

“The issue of the general support grant [as given by the HKADC] is of great concern and I personally dislike it,” says Ho. “If we had a lot of money, then fine, but it is a great injustice when the rest of the arts gets the leftovers.” Conceding that simply cancelling the grants would solve little, he says a reassessment ought to be done.

Chia speaks with more circumspection. He says there is insufficient money after the big boys have taken their allocation. Echoing the HKADC refrain, he says groups need to be helped to “diversify their funding sources.”

Chia says that inasmuch as the older generation tends to regard arts as a low priority, arts development takes time. “It has taken a long time to develop … but I don’t believe that Hong Kong, after all this work, should cut their money. Each year we hear of freezing budgets or cuts — and the result is an anaemic situation.”

Jefferies would certainly agree. He says he would like to see more ballet but he thinks it is necessary for Hong Kong Ballet to make an impact internationally. “We have our own unique style and the reality is that a diversity of small groups saps strength from the large one.”

Target
Should anyone go by attendance records, the Hong Kong Sinfonietta would seem an easy target for a budget trimming. It has yet to break the 60 per cent mark. The City Contemporary Dance even worse off at an average an average 50 per cent.

Despite the concern about the huge sums going too to the few, Bruce Walker, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Players, says he thinks many of the smaller musical and drama groups are not that concerned with grants. He says that has become less of an issue for English language productions, which are now unlikely to attract funding.

Walker’s main concern is venues. “As far as I can see, there is not a shortage of venues for these smaller productions. The government has excellent facilities but they’re just too expensive to hire,” he says. And while Urbco does offer halls at reduced rates, often as much as three months is required to apply for the dispensation. Walker also questions the wisdom of the government building more theatres if the rates are not at affordable levels.

Certainly, Hong Kong needs more performance space. The usage rates for the City Hall Concert Hall, and the Cultural Centre’s Concert Hall and Grand Theatre hit 97 per cent, 87 per cent and 98 per cent respectively. The upshot of this has been pressure on commercial ventures like Les Miserables. According to Walker, also a founder of Lunchbox, the impresario firm which organises world spectaculars like Les Miserables, any limit on the length of productions runs would discourage their visiting Hong Kong.

Unsurprisingly, such commercial shows are the only performing arts productions in Hong Kong to ring up profits.

Hong Kong arts, funding

SCMP (Sunday Post) 7.6.93

Singapore woos tourists with night safaris

The sound of the insects was deafening. From all black sides of the tropical jungle track came the chirping, clicking and croaking of hidden night life. “I can’t remember ever hearing it that loud,” whispered Bernard Harrison, the executive director of Singapore Zoo. “The heavy rain must have brought them out.”

But it was not the insects we had come to listen to. We were looking for the bharal.

Now, if you were told that a bharal is a sure-footed blue sheep which hailed from the craggy foothills of the Himalayas and it was standing on a rocky outcrop happily chewing rough grass and oblivious of insect noise and darkness, you might raise an eyebrow. Himalayan foothills do not normally come equipped with equatorial jungle insects and 50 metres down the track become Himalayan marshland.

Bernard Harrison was showing off Singapore Zoo’s self-contained 40 hectare night safari park. It’s a world first.

The night safari park is adjacent to the Singapore Zoological Gardens and when completed will be about one-and-a-half times bigger. Its aim is to give visitors the opportunity to see the behaviour of nocturnal animals in a natural habitat. Up until now visitors to zoos or safari parks around the world have had a limited opportunity to see such animals - most zoos reverse night and day in nocturnal houses but this limits the animals’ size and their environment.

In the tropics, most of the animals are nocturnal.

“We have found ourselves in a virtually unique position. We have the climatic conditions to do this project - you need darkness to get the animals active and you ought to have a similar environment,” says Mr Harrison. In temperate climates, for example, when darkness does fall early the temperature drops. “Also such a project is expensive and you can’t show the nocturnal animals for half the year because it doesn’t get dark until 10 or 11 pm and you’ll lose money.”

Only a handful of zoos worldwide fall into the equatorial belt where night falls at a regular time and Singapore is one of them.

“Some of the very large habitats here leave the animals free to roam under unobtrusive lighting. The vegetation has, for the most part been left in its natural state, and we hope will give the visitor a feeling of actually travelling though a jungle under bright moonlight,” explains the zoo’s executive chairman, Dr Ong Swee Law.

At present only about ten per cent of the animals the zoo intends to display have been put into their new homes. When the S$60 million project (financed by government arms and the Singapore Tourist Authority) opens its doors in June next year, the zoo expects to have 1,200 animals roaming 47 habitats.

When it does open for the expected 600,000 visitors in the first year (although considering the zoo itself managed 1.35 million last year, its seems an under-estimation), they will board a tram which will take them through many of the exhibits but allow them to get on and off to follow several paths totalling 1.3 kilometres.

The zoo’s visitors are 65 per cent Singaporean. The rest are tourists. The Night Safari, however, hopes to make it a 50/50 split. With the vast majority of the new animals from Asia, many of them endangered, more Asian visitors are expected.

“We’ll be attracting people with package deals, like dinner evenings and pushing tours through tour operators. Our main selling point will have to be reinforcing that experience of a tropical jungle,” says Mr Harrison.

He certainly sees the natural environment with the offer of dinner at end of an evening a great attraction for Hongkong visitors.

The animals themselves will be in specially designed enclosures similar to their natural habitat and separated from the public by strategic moats, cattle grids and discrete natural walls. Other animals, like some species of deer, will be allowed to roam free around the forest but attracted to artificial waterholes where they would usually congregate at night.

Of course, it will still be night when the animals become active but British theatre lighting designer, Simon Corder, was brought in to provide discreet but effective illumination. All the exhibits will be lit using low intensity but illuminating lighting. “It wasn’t an easy balance, keeping the animals comfortable that it was night and letting the visitor see them. So far we’ve found it takes the animals only two or three days to get used to the lights and accept it still is night,” explains Mr Harrison.

And it is effective. From that Himalayan bharal the tram moves down to a Himalayan marshland environment where nocturnal birds - whistling teal, ducks and coot cattle egret squat in their new homes. “I didn’t think swan were nocturnal,” said one member of the party. “They aren’t really,” laughs Mr Harrison, “But we have to have some poetic license.”

Further on are wild Indian water buffalo but tame compared to the African variety. Jackals fighting over food just thrown into their enclosure are highly active compared to the slumbering vegetarian neighbours of two Indian one-horned Rhino.

“There are only about 600 of these left in the wild,” explains Mr Harrison. Conservation is another aim of this park. “In the long-term it’s a very important angle, putting together a group of endangered Asian animals. Given these facilities and expertise we hope to do some captive breeding in the future.”

Already the zoo itself has successfully bred many endangered species and for Mr Harrison it will be an important part of the night safari’s ‘raison d’etre’. “People come and see our other endangered species and pay for it - it’s a cash viable business and we expect the night safari to be even more successful, after all it is unique.”

The zoo’s consultant, Sri Lankan, Lyn de Alwis, originally floated the idea. With his 23 years helping design and run the zoo he had several suggestions as how the 40 hectares might be developed. Dr Ong liked the night safari idea.

“Dr Ong liked it because it was unique but also because it complemented the zoo - it doesn’t compete directly because it’s a night attraction,” ventures Mr Harrison.

As for problems, the zoo experts are keeping their fingers crossed. “We don’t foresee anything major - getting the animals into their hidden enclosures after midnight might be one, but we don’t think we’ll have problems with members of the public molesting the animals. Although we are a bit concerned about losing some of them in the jungle and to pythons,” he laughs.

The Night Safari will be open to visitors from June 1994 between 6.30 pm.

Singapore Night Safari

The Middle East March 1988

Lack of knowledge about the Acquired Immune DeficiencySyndrome (AIDS) has led to a multitude of misunderstandings about the virus. However, one definite fact is that every country in the world is concerned by the rapid spread of the disease. In January, health ministers from 140 countries met in London to pool their ideas on how to combat AIDS. Gerard O’Kane attended the conference and he looks at how Middle East countries are tackling the virus.

By 1991 there is expected to be a sixfold increase in the number of AIDS victims around the world bringing the total to one million. That was the message delivered to health ministers from over 140 countries - including 17 in the Middle East and North Africa during a three-day summit in London at the end of January.

Dr Jonathan Mann, Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) AIDS prevention campaign, told delegates it is estimated that between five and ten million people have already been infected with the virus without developing the immune deficiency syndrome. “We are still in the early phases of a global epidemic,” he said.

The summit meeting was an unprecedented gathering of health ministers organised and financed by the British Government and the WHO. “This summit gives us all a precious, doubly precious opportunity”, said Dr Mahler, director general of the WHO. “We will be shown what others have done to inform and educate about AIDS. We will see through their work, how we can best proceed, if we have not already done so. And we will, through the fact of our meeting together, through our commitment to the Global AIDS Strategy, draw strength from a common purpose.”

Growing fears?
Middle East and North African countries have approximately 152 AIDS cases, as reported to the WHO by the beginning of this year. Observers note, however, that this is unlikely to be a full picture since some states are reluctant to either admit to having the disease or have not reported cases to the WHO. Indeed of the 152 cases, 143 have been reported by only four countries. It should be pointed out that there have been eight other cases which have not been reported to the WHO, all officially relating to blood transfusion infections.

There is, however, growing fear about the disease through out the Middle East. Last month, Kuwait hosted the second Middle East conference on AIDS. Health officials stressed that, although the incidence of the syndrome was low in the region compared to other parts of the world, concern was growing. The UAE, for example, with a population of only 1.7m, said in January that 22 residents of the country had died of AIDS last year and nearly 300 were found infected with the virus.

Blood screening is now the major method of prevention in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Oman. Throughout the Middle East the WHO has been impressed by the willingness to face up to and tackle the AIDS disease. “During 1987 an extraordinary positive change in the attitude of national authorities has been observed,” noted one official document. That year saw 13 states requiring WHO collaboration in the development of national programmes and all but one of the Middle East states have established national committees and identified national focal points on AIDS. There have also been a series of conferences for the Middle East to help medical personnel become familiar with identification and screening techniques. Partly as a result of these three seminars, two medical facilities have been designated WHO collaborating centres - the US Naval Medical Research Unit in Cairo and the Kuwait Unversity Faculty of Medicine.

Speaking at the London conference, Oman’s Under Secretary for the Ministry of Health, Dr Salim bin Hamdan Al Akhzamy, argued: “We believe that in our situation blood transfusion would be the main possible mode of transmission of AIDS.” This is generally the mode of transmission that the health ministries in the Middle East admit when AIDS cases are revealed. Little information is available and little research has been done on the extent of homosexuality or intravenous drug use, which are the main patterns in North America and Europe. Heterosexual transmission is the main way the disease is spread in Africa. As a result any educational AIDS prevention campaign is directed to the whole population rather than the identified high risk groups, as in African and European countries.

Many states argue that the religious culture of the region protects it from the worst of AIDS. The Kuwait Minister of Public Health has been quoted as saying that AIDS “will remain out of our region if we stick to the guidance of our Islamic religion.” He added that Islam prohibits the p-ractice,of homosexuality which he saw as the main cause of the disease. The WHO is thankful that this attitude is no longer official policy in most Middle Eastern states since, as Dr Mann pointed out in his opening speech to the conference, the Pattern 11 mode of transmission is mainly heterosexual, as in Africa.

Compulsory testing?
The last day of the London conference saw a final declaration on the global fight against AIDS. Critics argued that important points had been glossed over. The Indian Minister for Human Resource and Development, Shri P V Narasimha Rao, said that the issue of compulsory testing had found no consensus and that was reflected in its absence from the final communique.

Although pressure groups had pointed the finger at Cuba for its massive compulsory screening programme, which HIV victims are detained in a camp and at Belgium and the West German state of Bavaria, the Middle East looked on with interest. In Dubai, for example, all those engaged in handling food are expected to undergo screening before getting their health cards. In Iraq, it has been reported that all visitors should carry HIV-free certificates, but it is not known if this has been implemented. Other countries also have restrictions. It is now open to question if countries with restrictive travel laws and screening requirements for HIV victims will change their minds, despite the WHO’s official line that the social, political and moral consequences of discriminating against HIV victims could be detrimental to everyone concerned in the long term. The conference finally warned of the need “to protect human rights and dignity”.

Dr Mann, nevertheless, was optimistic at the end of the conference, saying: “This is a family of many members … an extraordinary amount of consensus has been achieved in a relatively brief period of time.” With some justification he said that the meeting would not have been possible two years ago.

Consensus, at least officially, did appear in the final statement on the issue of discrimination and the need to take account of various moral values. The London Declaration on AIDS Prevention accepted that individual countries’ policies had to take account of these values to combat AIDS. The declaration succeeded in pleasing the homosexual pressure groups, the Islamic States and the Vatican.

War against AIDS

African Health August/September 1986

Hydatid disease in Turkana: drugs promise help with awkward patients. Turkana people live so intimately with their dogs and camels that the hydatid parasite is difficult to eradicate. Journalist Gerry O’Kane reports.

KENYA’S most north-western province, Turkana, suffers more than and poverty and prickly thorn bushes. More people are affected by the parasitic Hydatid disease than any other place in the world. Caused by tapeworm in animals, eggs pass through the animals’ excreta and if man should happen to take the eggs orally, cysts can develop.

1983 saw the beginning of an effort to tackle the problem and the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) set up Africa’s first hydatid control programme. Although only a pilot scheme, Eberhard Zeyhle, a West German parasitologist working for AMREF points cut “We cover the north-west area of Turkana, some 9,000 km sq. with about 15 000 Turkana people - not an easy task.” Officially AMREF say that the programme is to provide “an integrated multidisciplinary approach which will examine the epidemiological factors which create the problem and simultaneously develop new strategies to provide the economical and effective means of controlling it.”

What this means is that they have set themselves a task not only to eradicate its causes but also to pioneer the use of new drugs to cure it. Three years later their progress is still agonisingly slow - operations that physically remove the cyst remain the only cure for hydatid sufferers - but solutions are being put into effect.

“I’m convinced that we’ll be successful” said Zehle “but it is so frustrating. Sometimes when you think you have a good line, the parasite hits back and leaves you more confused . . .” Not only is the project faced with covering a large area of hostile terrain but also a population that is suspicious of modern medicine and can be incredibly uncooperative. On the research front, there is no routine method for distinpuishing the hydatid organism (Echinococcus) from some other species of organisms.

The solution that the programme is trying to produce involves devising new techniques of parasitic analysis, developing new methods of treatment, educating the Turkana to new standards of health and dramatic changes in their social lifestyles. Add to that the pressures of only another three years’ funding and their project seems doomed to failure. But AMREF has made steps forward. It was in 1958 that the Medical Officer in Kitale first noticed the unusually high incidence of hydatidosis in the Turkana. Although it was not uncommon in animals in the rest of Kenya, indeed cases of it in farm animals are still found in Britain, it was rarely seen in man. Between 1960 and 1980 AMREF have been directly involved in treating over 1,500 cases. For such a large region populated by a nomadic tribe averse to modern methods, the figures probably do not reflect the true incidence of the disease. Until then Cyprus was believed to have the highest rate for hydatid. Zeyhle admitted that one of the reasons he joined AMREF’s research project was the enormous number of cases, “We saw 14 cases in the first week here, mostly children. I couldn’t see that many cases in Germany in a year.”

Recent surveys are more detailed, now estimating that as many as 200 per 100,000 get hydatidosis, with females in the child-bearing age group having over three times the infection rate of men. Earlier research from countries like Iceland and Egypt pointed to animals as being an essential link in the chain of transmission to man, particularly domestic animals.

In Turkana it was discovered that 19 out of every 27 dogs were infected with the Echinococcus worms, a higher rate than any wild or domestic animal tested. The Echinococc s organism is suitable for developing mutant strains and this is one explanation of Turkana’s high rate of infection, also making it more difficult to find a solution. While the horse strain found in Britain rarelv affects man, the strain in Turkana is obviously highly infective. Man is not just an intermediate host but a victim.

The unhygienic lifestyle of the people and their harsh living conditions also make infection more likely. A tapeworms eggs are passed through the infected animal’s excreta. Man then gets the disease when he swallows the parasite. The eggs hatch in the part of the gut joining the stomach to the small intestines and on becoming larvae enter the blood by penetrating the intestinal walls. Travelling around the blood stream, the larvae eventually lodge themselves in various parts of the body and develop into a cyst.

In Turkana the dog is the major carrier. AMREF see several ways in which they originally get the disease. Although fewer other farm animals compared to the rest of Kenya are infected, camels have been found to be heavily diseased. Often their remains are fed to dogs and their contaminated meat can pass the organism on.

Dogs also have the opportunity of feeding off humans who may have been suffering from hydatid cysts. It’s not unusual for the ‘l’urkana to leave the dead or dying where they fall, especially if the tribe is on the move. Even for buried dead the graves are normally shallow, consequently dogs often feed on the corpses.

The dog plays an important social role in the Turkana’s lifestyle and its intimacy with the people explains how high transmission rates occur. Dogs are used as “nurses” for infants and women usually have one during the child-rearing period. This would help explain why women are three times more likely to get the disease. Specially trained, the dogs lick up children’s vomit and faeces in the manyatta (hut) and also lick the children’s face and anus when they soil themselves. This gives ample opportunity for the people living in the manyatta to become, infected by the Echinococcus eggs entangled in the beasts’ muzzle and fur.

But there are numerous other ways in which infection can be spread. The tribe often use faeces as an ingredient in the preparation of dressings on cuts or as part of a lubricant mixture used on their heavy necklaces. Producing their locally dried milk also creates a risk since it is laid on skins and left in the sun to dry. Not only is the milk open to interference from dogs as it dries, but the skins on which it is drying are often the dogs’ sleeping mats.

Although there is some doubt as to how resistant the Echinococcus eggs are to heat, involved in the other processes, there is no doubt that the eggs can be spread through water holes. Not only do the people and animals drink from them but the animals also wash and defecate in them. The water is often stagnant and Zeyhle suggests that over 700 eggs per litre can survive.

“Essentially the disease is caused by unhygenic conditions and it’s only through the long and arduous task of education that we can combat the problem” he said. Quoting Dr. MacPherson, head of the AMREF project, Zeyhle noted “The solution to the disease lies with the Turkana. themselves.”

Although the people are aware of hydatid, (they call it espeses) educating them in methods to control it has meant setting up education groups led by elders, chiefs and in many cases school children. But this type of change will be slow. “The Turkana are a tough people and frankly, don’t cooperate. We are far away from education,” sighed Zeyhle.

Nevertheless progress has been made and AMRFF are following the successful dog eradication programme used in Cyprus. Acceptance of the programme has been gained and the killing of unwanted puppies is encouraged, as is the sterilisation of bitches. Zeyhle estimated that 60% to 70% of the dog population would have to be killed. Following the eradication scheme AMREF intend to register the dogs and treat them with Praziquantel. While a single dose will kill the dogs’ eggs and tapeworm, the animal can be reinfected -Within six hours but it takes at least 42 days for the worms to produce more eggs. AMREF plan successive doses every 42 days.

This is only part of the plan to combat the problem. Keeping dogs away from sources of infection is also planned, for example preventing the dogs access to offal by fencing off abbatoirs and cemetery areas. Naturally this means the Turkana must bury their dead in particular areas and kill their livestock in a controlled way. Hanging meat out of animals’ reach is another option. “We also want to get the Turkana to keep the dogs out of their homes but it means avoiding the close contact with the animal that they are used to,” said Zeyhle. Again it returns to the frustrating area of education.

Unfortunately treating victims of hydatidosis hasn’t made many strides forward, still depending upon surgery. it has, however, highlighted yet more anomalies of the organism. If during the operation the cyst should burst, it releases more organisms which begin to grow again. “I suppose the postoperative recurrence rate is about 20%. Usually you can’t operate again,” said Zeyhle.

What is interesting about any cyst bursting during an operation is that the shock of the alien organisms flooding the body would, in 9 out of 10 cases, kill the patient. “They should die from the shock to the system but for some reason the Turkana survive. We think it might have something to do with their normally malnourished state - their immune systems simply haven’t got the energy to respond and so they avoid shock. But we don’t know for sure,” revealed Zeyhle. On the chemical front AMREF are working with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) to find a drug that can cure patients. At present the future looks not too dark with Albendazole signalling that this might just he the breakthrough the project has been looking for.

Hydatid disease in Turkana, Kenya, parasites