Background

Our readers may be interested to know the background behind our team's idea of creating this website on tuberculosis. Rest assured that an interesting turn of events led to the creation of this website!

It all started when team members Shawn, Belvin, Rex, Michael watched a movie on DVD in the early part of 2003. The movie was Moulin Rouge which absolutely captivated us. Set in beautiful Paris circa 1899, the simple but powerful story of a penniless writer Christian (played by Ewan Mcgregor) who fell in love with a gorgeous courtesan Satine (played by Nicole Kidman) moved our hearts. The tragic ending after Satine had battled unsuccessfully a fatal case of tuberculosis left a deep impression in us.

We decided to find out more about the fatal disease that had consumed Satine and we found out more than we had bargained for. We were surprised to discover that TB is a disease as old as mankind and is the leading infectious disease killer. More alarmingly, we also learned that TB has been making a dramatic resurgence in the past decade. We were sure that many people in Singapore and other industrialized countries were not aware of these startling facts on tuberculosis

At the same time, our school was embarking on charity projects as part of the school's Community Involvement Programme (CIP). By chance, the Singapore Anti Tuberculosis Association (SATA) approached the school to see if it could collaborate with SATA on a community project to raise funds for charities adopted by SATA. SATA, a non profit organization has been at the forefront of Singapore 's fight against tuberculosis.

The school suggested the creation of a CD on "SATA and Tuberculosis" to be created by students from the Information Technology club. The CD will be sold to the public and all proceeds from the sale of the CDs will go towards SATA. In September 2003, after working 6 months on the project, team members Shawn, Belvin, Rex and Michael in collaboration with two other schools in Singapore successfully produced the CD.

In late October 2003, team leader Shawn came across the Thinkquest Webpage competition. Shawn suggested to members Belvin, Rex and Michael to collaborate yet again to come up with a website to promote awareness on tuberculosis. The team wanted to tap on the vast reach of the Internet to promote awareness on this forgotten killer and its resurgence. The webpage team also felt that as the website could incorporate animations and interactive features, reaching out to the masses would have been very effective and enriching for our readers

The team spent the next 4 months doing further primary and secondary research on tuberculosis, designing the website, producing Flash animations, linking and debugging. The collaboration with our team members and with the Singapore Anti Tuberculosis Association was very fruitful but not without its share of problems and tribulations. This will be described in the section on "Challenges Encountered"