The other piece of infectious disease-related news in the Straits Times today was on parechovirus infections. In an (as far as I can tell) unpublished study, follow-up of 80 babies infected with human parechovirus (HPeV) type 3 in Sydney showed that developmental delays had occurred in more than half of them after a year. About a […]

In the first large foodbourne outbreak of the year (to my knowledge anyway), seventy-six cases of food poisoning so far have been linked to the consumption of durian pastries from Goodwood Park Hotel according to various mainstream news reports today, resulting in the suspension of the hotel bakery’s food establishment license by the National Environment […]

I had the honour of being invited for the above event in Hong Kong (organised by the University of Hong Kong), held on 13th of March, with a small accompanying seminar on the next morning. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014 catalysed a lot of frustration with the global health system (which basically […]

For the past few days, I and many others have been riveted by the match between Google Deepmind’s AlphaGo and Lee Sedol – one of the top 5 Go players in the world (he is variously listed as world champion as well as current world no.2, but it’s not as easy to figure out the […]

Almost two weeks ago, Channel News Asia reported that terrapins may harbour non-typhoidal Salmonella bacteria. Non-typhoidal Salmonella, as the term suggests, are Salmonella species other than the exclusively human-adapted Salmonella spp. that cause enteric (i.e. typhoid and paratyphoid) fever. The former tend to cause gastroenteritis for the large part, although they may also cause severe infections in immunocompromised persons, including […]

Interrupting the febrile neutropenia series to write about Zika virus, which has been in the global news for some months but very recently became a hot topic in the local mainstream news because of the explosive nature of its spread in South America, the new association of this South American strain with microcephaly (in children […]

The SG50 infectious diseases project “Overcoming Infectious Diseases and Singapore: Past, Present and Future” was officially launched at the end of last year at the Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) Theatrette. The occasion was graced by the new Minister of State for the Ministries of Communications & Information, and Health, as well as the TTSH CEO, […]

It is the last day of 2015, and therefore timely to reflect back on the significant events of the year. Oftentimes, the true impact of certain events are not known until much later in the future, and media hype (or lack thereof) creates its own bias which is hard to overcome. Here is a personal […]

Dr Moses Yu passed away yesterday morning, 30th December 2015, at the age of 82 years. He was the first locally trained microbiologist in Singapore, heading the Department of Pathology at the Ministry of Health Singapore (the Department was only transferred to Singapore General Hospital in 1989 – a move that met with mixed reception. […]

Many thanks to Dr Edmund Monteiro, former Director of Communicable Diseases Centre, who gamely agreed to be interviewed on Channel News Asia’s First Look Asia about his experiences with infectious diseases in the past, and also about our SG50 Project. The interview was done live on 14th December 2015. You can view his video interview […]