Newly appointed WHO Representative to Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam, Dr Rabindra Abeyasinghe, paid a courtesy call to the Honourable Minister of Health Singapore, Mr. Ong Ye Kung.
In the meeting that took place on 29 April 2022, Dr Rabindra complimented the Ministry of Health on their efforts in providing leadership and technical direction to the COVID-19 response in the country. Dr Rabindra also thanked the Honourable Minister of Health for Singapore’s active participation as a member of the WHO Executive Board in the last two years.
The Government of Singapore has demonstrated a great degree of success in protecting its citizens and its large population of migrant workers, including the high coverage of COVID-19 immunization for all. Singapore has also re-opened the country in a carefully calibrated and science-based manner with the gradual relaxation of public health and social measures while ensuring minimum impact on population health and facilitating economic recovery.
The country has used novel approaches for its COVID-19 response, including the inclusion of the private sector and implementing the whole-of-society approach. The sharing of these experiences with other countries will be an important contribution to strengthening current and future regional capacity for emergency response.
Dr Rabindra and the Honourable Minister discussed how current pandemic response strategies could, in the long term, strengthen the health system capacities, particularly for health security in Singapore and beyond. Among areas discussed beyond COVID-19 response were several possible areas of collaboration between Singapore, WHO and other Member States in the region, including sharing of experiences from Singapore on Urban Health and Healthy Ageing.
During his visit to Singapore Dr Rabindra had the opportunity to meet with officials from across the Ministry of Health, several WHO Collaborating Centres and other important stakeholders including the Health Sciences Authority of Singapore (HSA), the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) and the Environmental Health Institute of the NEA.