Images on cigarette packs come to life for the kids

Some pupils gasped, while others cringed as they shuffled past preserved specimens of human lungs blackened and diseased from smoking.

"Can I not look? I'll have nightmares," 12-year-old Koh Ker Shuan of South View Primary School asked her two classmates. Nonetheless, she bravely did.

"The black one (lung specimen) is scary, but I think I understand better the bad effects of smoking now," the Primary 6 pupil said.

The display, on loan from the National University of Singapore (NUS), includes an ulcerated stomach and two hearts with clogged arteries, all preserved in glass casings. The specimens are part of a new anti-smoking pilot programme initiated by Alexandra Hospital.