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HealthServe is a local non-governmental organisation that offers medical care, counselling, social assistance and other support to migrant workers in the community. At HealthServe’s clinics in Geylang, Mandai and Jurong, migrant workers are able to access medical care for only S$8. Since 2013, Associate Professor Jeremy Lim has been a volunteer at HealthServe. He started as a regular volunteer general practitioner for a few years before transitioning to the administrative side as chair of the medical services committee. With the announcement of DORSCON Orange, the directive was that doctors workingRead more

A little over two months since the coronavirus emerged, more than 92,000 people have been infected and over 3,000 have succumbed to it. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently raised the global risk assessment level to ‘very high’, but many have been questioning why it has yet to declare COVID-19 a pandemic. By definition, a pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease, with increasing and sustained transmission in the general population. For now, there is comparatively lesser infected cases and slower spread outside of China, South Korea, Italy

While Singapore has managed to slow the spread of the disease, the virus continues to spread rapidly around the world. “Singapore’s approach of actively looking for new cases and quarantining close contacts has been effective in ring-fencing clusters of infection so far, and we have not seen evidence of community spread… However, it is premature to say that the worst is over,” said Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, Chief Health Scientist at the Ministry of Health. “Given the rate at which new cases are being reported around the world, there is

Drawing on lessons learnt from SARS in 2003, Singapore confronted the COVID-19 outbreak with a cautious step-by-step approach. Since the virus spreads through contact with respiratory droplets (and there is currently no evidence of airborne transmission), the Ministry of Health (MOH) has discouraged the public from hoarding and wearing masks when they are not sick. Maintaining proper hand hygiene and avoiding touching the face are more effective to reduce chance of infection. On that note, Associate Professor Jeremy Lim, partner at Ogilvy Wymann and Co-Director of Global Health at SSHSPH,

The COVID-19 outbreak seems to have tapered off in Singapore in the past week — four weeks after the virus was first confirmed here — but it is still far too early to say the worst is over. While the number of new cases detected has fallen steadily, there is no way to be certain that another surge will not happen. The fall in the number of confirmed cases in the past week indicates that Singapore’s efforts have been successful in limiting the spread of COVID-19, said Associate Professor Hsu

Healthcare workers work harder and longer in a public health crisis. At the front line of patient care, they are vulnerable to catching the coronavirus they are fighting. Having gained valuable lessons and insights from the SARS outbreak in 2003, Singapore has put in place adequate measures to protect them in this current COVID-19 outbreak. Dr Gan Wee Hoe (MPH ‘11), head of the department of occupational and environmental medicine at Singapore General Hospital and Adjunct Assistant Professor at SSHSPH, and Professor Chia Kee Seng share an overview of what