Effectiveness of Existing Disease Surveillance Programmes

Dr Chia Shi-Lu asked the Minister for Health if he can provide an update on our disease surveillance programmes and the challenges and constraints involved in implementing them in our clinics and hospitals.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) has a robust surveillance system to monitor communicable diseases and protect public health. Aside from notifications of infectious disease cases by clinicians and laboratories, MOH also works with hospitals, polyclinics and other Government agencies to analyse disease syndromes and trending of different strains of infectious agents.

With globalisation, there is an increased risk of infectious diseases spreading across borders. We have seen this with Ebola and, more recently, with Zika. In addition, infectious diseases can spread from animals to humans, as shown by diseases, such as Avian Flu and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. We need to remain vigilant and regularly review our systems and processes to keep an eye on these threats.

One important aspect of an effective surveillance system is for our healthcare workers to look out for suspicious cases and report them promptly. In doing so, we should be careful not to increase the administrative burden on our healthcare workers, so that they can continue to focus on their core work and patient care. We need to make good use of information technology and data analytics to streamline our reporting processes and continually improve the national surveillance and response system.

MOH is also enhancing our national capacity and capabilities in infectious diseases. We will work closely with the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology on prevention, surveillance and response. Building on this collaboration, we will set up the National Centre for Infectious Diseases by 2018 to serve as the national facility for outbreak prevention and containment.

Through these efforts, we aim to bring together the collective efforts of all stakeholders, so that we can work together to protect Singapore from existing and emerging threats of infectious diseases.