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Singapore has the largest menthol tobacco market in the world. Half of the cigarettes sold here are flavoured with menthol. In her research of leaked internal tobacco industry documents, Dr Yvette van der Eijk, Senior Research Fellow, found that, in Singapore, tobacco companies used menthol cigarettes to target teenagers. She believes that a ban on tobacco flavours could help to reduce the smoking rates among Singaporean youth. Other territories like Canada, Brazil, Turkey, the European Union and parts of the United States are now banning tobacco flavours. Research so farRead more

Award-winning Singaporean cartoonist Sonny Liew and Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, Programme Leader (Infectious Diseases) have collaborated to produce a comic book titled ‘The Antibiotic Tales’. The comic covers the topic of antimicrobial resistance — the ability of microbes to evolve and resist the drugs used to kill them. “While antimicrobial resistance is a major global public health threat, it is not well understood by the public,” said A/Prof Hsu. “The problem is not just in human medicine, but also in how food animals are raised and how waste is recycled or

More than 5,400 people in Singapore have been infected by dengue so far this year, which is more than four times the figure in the same period last year. For every infected person who shows symptoms, there are up to 10 others who are infected but suffer a mild form of the illness, and do not go to a doctor. Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, Programme Leader (Infectious Diseases), said it is “clear that we are in the midst of a dengue epidemic”. “June is also the ‘traditional’ start of

On 3–5 June 2019, the School conducted a training workshop on ‘Leadership in Occupational Health’ with 29 senior-management-level participants from various hospitals, preventive centres and national institutes in Vietnam. This workshop aims to provide participants with competencies and skills in the planning, implementation and evaluation of health programmes, and acts as the second part of a course that was conducted on 10–12 April in Nha Trang, Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam with the same participants. The course is part of the Public Health in Vietnam programme, under the TFI-NUS-Viet Nam project

A recent study estimated that 210,000 men in Singapore have sex with other men, and they could face a concentrated epidemic of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Led by Vice Dean (Research), Associate Professor Alex Cook, the study is the first of its kind to estimate the number of people in specific groups in Singapore who are at risk of HIV infection. There are four key ‘hidden’ population groups most likely to acquire and transmit HIV. They are estimated to be: 210,000 men who have sex with men 72,000 male clients of

The nature of work is changing due to advancements in technology and the modern world. As a result of an ageing workforce and increased levels of sedentariness at work, the prevalence of chronic diseases in the workforce is expected to grow. Ergonomic measures to protect workers both physically (e.g., visual, auditory and musculoskeletal health) and cognitively (e.g., mental workload, impact on sensory processing) must evolve to be relevant to those who engage in these new modes of interacting with the digital world. Sophisticated communication and mobile technologies have also allowed

World No Tobacco Day falls on 31 May every year. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that tobacco use is currently responsible for the death of about seven million adults across the world each year. On average in developed countries, smokers die 14 years before their time and lose 23 years of their life. There is irrefutable evidence of the devastating health impacts of smoking and a long list of health consequences and diseases caused by tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke (second hand smoking). Singapore has made great

How is the world that we have made remaking us? In a short podcast series called ‘Changing Worlds, Changing Bodies’, UK-based writer Vybarr Cregan-Reid travels to US, Kenya and Singapore to find out why our feet are getting bigger and flatter, why back pain is the number one cause of disability in many places in the world, and what stress is doing to our faces. In Singapore, as with other urban Asian cities, the rates of myopia have increased in the past few decades. Vybarr spoke to Professor Saw Seang Mei to

The number of people smoking e-cigarettes in Hong Kong more than tripled from 13,200 in 2017 to 42,000 in 2018, according to a survey commissioned by the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health (COSH). At a news conference on 23 May 2019, COSH called for the city’s Legislative Council (LegCo) to pass the e-cigarette ban legislation as soon as possible. The deliberation on the bill is currently adjourned and will resume on June 25. Although the prevalence of alternative smoking products — including electronic cigarettes and ‘heat not burn’