Singapore on alert for next pandemic

Jamie Ee Wen Wei, Straits Times 21 Mar 09;

Singapore is in the midst of a region largely expected to be 'ground zero' for the next disease pandemic.

That is why the Government is making serious efforts to tackle infectious diseases, said the permanent secretary for health, Ms Yong Ying-I, at the opening yesterday of a conference on the genetics and genomics of infectious diseases.

The keynote speaker at the four-day international event, she said Singapore's brush with infectious diseases - most notably the Sars epidemic in 2003 - makes the threat not just a 'theoretical one, but a very real one'.

'One of my own friends, who headed the Intensive Care Unit at one of our hospitals, caught the disease from a patient and almost died,' said Ms Yong, who was the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) at the time.

'I was one of those government leaders who said 'never again.''

More recently, the resurgence of dengue and chikungunya has been worrying.

In the first two months of this year, 1,102 people came down with dengue fever. Another 211 people were infected with chikungunya, which struck Singapore for the first time in January last year.

Ms Yong said that life sciences research was one of the areas the Government is developing to deal with the potential threat.

She highlighted several key efforts that are currently under way.

One is the merging of university and hospital campuses into academic medical centres under a unified governance structure. One such example is the merger of the National University of Singapore School of Medicine and the National University Hospital.

The Government has also allocated substantial grants to support clinical research and translational - the so-called 'bench to bedside' - research.

One example is the $25 million flagship grant awarded to a collaboration involving the Genome Institute of Singapore, three hospitals, the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases and some other agencies.

This consortium is studying the genetic epidemiology of dengue and aims to improve clinical management and develop new preventive measures and medicines.

Ms Yong said the economic downturn will not affect the Government's commitment or funding to build capabilities in this area.