Plan for Mobilising and Coordinating Healthcare Resources in Mass Casualty Incidents

Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Health whether Singapore's healthcare system has a plan for mobilising and coordinating all healthcare resources in case of a mass casualty incident that is similar to France's national emergency response plan "Plan Blanc".

The Government has a national inter-agency response plan for mass casualty incidents. Under this national response plan, the Ministry of Health (MOH) oversees and coordinates the management of casualties at the incident site, and at public hospitals and polyclinics.

Our national response plan is similar to the French national emergency response plan. It involves the deployment of command and field medical teams to the incident site as well as management of resources and capacity at our healthcare institutions to attend to casualties.

We conduct regular training, exercises and reviews within the healthcare family as well as with other agencies to prepare for such incidents. For instance, in October 2017, MOH participated in Exercise Northstar, a multi-agency exercise.

I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for his answer. Just two supplementary questions. Firstly, does this plan aim to integrate both public and private healthcare resources to operate in concert in case of a mass casualty?

Secondly, does MOH actively study the plans of other countries like France to learn from their experience, and that experience is evolving with more and more terrorist incidents, mass casualty incidents and so on. So, is that kind of study being done of the experience of other cities?

I thank the Member for the question. MOH's current plans are to ensure our public hospital capacity is able to cater to such incidents but, from time to time, when the need arises, we do tap on the resources of the private sector and involve them in consultations and our engagements.

With regards to studying other countries, the short answer is, yes, we do. We visit countries. Just last year, I was in London to study some of the practices as well as in Israel. So, yes, we do.