29 Jun 2004

Marshall Islands wants to cut down on public spitting

10:24 am on 29 June 2004

The Ministry of Health in the Marshall Islands is concerned about the spread of diseases because of spitting.

The Health Ministry is calling on the government to amend the communicable disease law to give health officials more powers to fight the spread of tuberculosis.

Our correspondent, Giff Johnson, says many young people spit possibly as a result of images seen on televison and in movies.

"This happens all over the place by literally thousands of people thousands of times everyday. Its not clear to me at this point whether there's going to be some effort made to include something about spitting in an amendment which would maybe put it in a category like littering, where you could be sited for the offence of spitting. But I know that from the Ministry of Health side there's a huge concern about the problem of disease spread from spitting."