Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Due to concerns over the increasing cases of acute conjunctivitis, On October 12th, 2007, Taipei City Government invited telecom operators to jointly conduct a test run of sending out over 2.2 million SMS messages (“Notice on Preventing and Treating Acute Conjunctivitis). Taipei City Government’s effort had effectively raised public awareness of this disease.
After conducting the test run of sending local SMS messages in Taipei, government analysts discovered that Taipei City’s reported cases were only one third of its neighboring cities and counties. They also noticed that Taipei City’s daily reported cases of over 2,200 cases had dropped on the 3rd day to 202 cases and consecutively each day.
Public health and prevention experts had estimated that, without effective prevention and treatment measures, at least 40,000 people in Taipei would have been infected in an epidemic outbreak of acute conjunctivitis. After taking preventive measures, numbers of reported cases began to drop day by day.
The reported estimated number of infected people (over 5,000) was drastically different than the predicted amount. Public health experts believe the preventive measures have effectively contained the disease. This is why the reported actual numbers of infected people was lower than the predicted amount. With dedicated health staffs, the local SMS Service method contributed to the success of preventing the Acute Conjunctivitis disease.