It is normally the kind of disease outbreak one gets to hear about in some distant and undeveloped region.

But not this time around. This is in strait-laced Singapore, one of the most spectacular economic oases in the world.

The nation's gay community would have known about the Nation's Party - an annual gay and lesbian parade a la Mardi Gras - but many others in Singapore were only aware of it on March 9.

This was when senior minister for information, communications, the arts and health, Dr Balaji Sadasivan, squarely placed the blame for the recent 28 percent spike in Aids cases on the event which gathers together gays and lesbians from around the region.

Held usually close to the nation's birthday celebrations on Aug 9, the party is celebrated on Sentosa island, possibly to prevent disruption of the country's delicate mores on sexual behaviour over those lifestyles deemed as 'far-fetched' or even as 'alternative '.

While the rise in Aids cases is hardly anywhere near that in South Africa, for example, the urgency of controlling the pandemic lies in protecting the one lifeline the nation has - its people, whose ingenuity has made Singapore the economic wonder it is today.

Currently, some 2,000 are infected with the HIV virus, and the 311 new cases just last year alone makes news of the disease a sobering one.

Of the new cases, gays constituted a third of the number reported and that was sufficient cause for the minister to be worried.

Potentially worrisome is the impact it will consequently have on a whole host of other things such as how long more such conduct should be tolerated or if there is a need to legislate homosexuality.

Would legislation work?

If legislation does come into effect, it would mean turning on its head all those conservative family values that have held the nation together.

It would also mean adopting Western-style concepts of alternative lifestyles such as gay marriages and setting in place potential seeds of conflict with the church and other religious movements.

And looking at how all these is happening now, any legislation would mean doing just the opposite thing it currently wants - which is more babies to staunch falling birth rates.

Legislation would also mean turning the armed forces into a laboratory for social experiments, where young draftees answering the call of compulsory military service, would potentially wind up sharing dormitories with gay men and risk exposure to an alternative 'lifestyle'. (Presently, gays need not disclose their sexual orientation.)

So, it would be a delicate balancing act and not an enviable task for the minister to arrive at a decision.

The republic is one of the few nations to adopt a laissez-faire attitude to most things in life, except in those matters where outside parties trying to rock its boat and attempt to enter its political domain unsolicited.

In matters of economic survival, it badly needs the world and its finances and expertise to come to its shores and prop up its man-made artifice.

But with all things that comes its way, separating the wheat from the chaff and accepting only those decisions beneficial to it would also mean treading cautiously on the social norms of its major trading partners.

As matters stand, the Aids issue will undoubtedly be attacked with characteristic Singaporean effectiveness - coldly, clinically and with a knock-out punch.

It that means incurring the wrath of human rights groups by enforcing nation-wide compulsory testing for its population, it will no doubt be done.

Because, what is at issue is not simply a matter of abstract principles of freedom and choice, but the very essence of protecting the only resource Singapore has - its people.

JAYA PRAKASH lectures in journalism in Beacon School of Technology.