By Aaron Bernstein, MD, MPH, physician in Medicine at Children’s and faculty, Center for Health and the Global Environment

Sometimes the best perspectives come from far away places and few places are farther from Boston than Singapore, a small yet highly developed island nation in southeast Asia where I spent much of October.

The distance between Boston and Singapore is more than geographic, however. While I was away, H1N1 reclaimed the national spotlight back home. Not a day went by without mention of it in the news. It became the topic of conversation among doctors and patients everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. …