Recently, I had received a few sms like following:
URGENT! 7 women have died after inhaling a free perfume sample that was mailed 2 them. The product was poisonous. The free sample r like lotions, perfumes, diapers… THROW THEM AWAY! The government believe this might b another terrorist act. They won’t announce it on the news because they don’t want to create panic or give the terrorist new ideas. Please pass this sms to all your love one! News from Hospital Gleneagles Ampang KL, 5 April 2007.
First of all, I believe that this SMS is fraud. Let me put it this way: why would any government try to cover this kind of news? What happen if more people sniff at the sample products and died because of the poison? And about “give the terrorist new ideas”? Oh come on, if they believe this is an act of terrorist, then this is not a new idea, isn’t it? The government will do the right step: announce the news to alert the public, put up a new call center to let the public call in more information or a place for people to dump those “samples” and also alert all the hospitals around the country for this kind of poison.
That’s why I said this is a fraud.
But we are in Malaysia. Who knows? Even during the SARS time, our neighbor countries were badly hit by SARS and yet, our news reported that Malaysia has ZERO case. That is until our Prime Minister demanded true transparency for the SARS case, and the next day, the number of SARS cases grew from ZERO to a few hundred. So we can’t be sure, especially when we are in Malaysia, can we?
That’s why I sent an email to Gleneagles Hospital regarding this issue and asked them to clarify this issue on their website.
Let’s see what happen next.
oh..so u did send an email to them?
me too.this is wat i get…
POISONOUS PERFUME SAMPLE HOAX
Gleneagles Intan Medical Centre
Recently, an email and short message service (SMS) has been circulating amongst members of the public pertaining to a poisonous perfume sample which caused the death of seven women upon inhalation and exposure. It was purportedly sent by a person who claimed to be an employee of Gleneagles Hospital Limited, on behalf of the hospital, in order to warn the public as these seven women were supposedly admitted and treated at Gleneagles Hospital .
We understand the panic and mystification that this email has caused and the public’s need to seek verification and consolation from a reliable medical institution such as ours. Thus, we would like to highlight that we have never admitted or treated such patients and have never been aware of such incidences. We would also like to categorically state that this email did not originate from our Hospital and / or any of our employees, current or otherwise. In addition, we declare that no one was ever at any time commissioned or authorised by the Hospital to deliver and circulate such warnings. Further to this, we would also like to point out that our registered company name is Gleneagles Hospital (Kuala Lumpur) Sdn. Bhd. (Co. No. 198498-T) and we were never at any point known as Gleneagles Hospital Limited as claimed in the email.
This email hoax first surfaced five years ago, and we had posted a statement on the GIMC website to clarify and inform members of the public that the contents of the email were a hoax.
In view of the above, we sincerely hope that all members of the public who had read this email and our clarification will inform everyone around them that this is a hoax and urge everyone to ignore and delete such emails in the future. Thank you.
For media inquiries please contact the Marketing & Corporate Communications Department at 03-42552761 or 03-42552892.
Yup, I emailed them and got a reply this morning. I have put up a new post for this to alert everyone.
We should not blindly forward all the SMS that we received. There were a lot of hoax SMS and e-mails floating around and that’s just sick.