Omani bloggers have started their Swine Flu Awareness Campaign yesterday by going through Souq Matrah to spread the message and educate people. The campaign which was originally initiated by Hamed Al Ghaithi, and then was taken to its next step by the cooperative effort of Bader Al Hinai [1], Ammar Al Mamari [2], Waleed Al Nabhani [3], Hashr Al Manthari [4], and Muawiyah Al Rawahi [5]. These bloggers distributed sanitizers to restaurants and coffee shops and guided their staff on the proper method of cleaning the tables after the customers. The restaurants and coffee shops were very receptive of the advice and seemed to take it seriously, probably as some of them thought the bloggers were an official delegation from the Ministry of Health.
The bloggers then moved to taxi drivers to inform them about the benefits of using alcohol hand sanitizers and face masks for reducing the risk of infection. The majority of the taxi drivers had no idea what the sanitizers were and thought that these are liquid soup that required using water to wash it off.
The final state of the program was walking around the souq to inform visitors about the benefits of using alcohol hand sanitizers.
Blogger Muawiyah wrote a detailed post with pictures [6] on how the event went and the varied reactions they received from the visitors of the souq.
Another event in the campaign against the Swine Flu is supposedly scheduled during the Eid break, but no specific details about the event can be found online yet.