I attended the launch of Dr Shashi Jayakumar and Mr Olimpiu Urcan’s marvelous book – Singapore Chess: A History, 1945-1990 – two evenings ago at the National Library. The book is both a historical treatise – including interviews with many former top Singaporean chess players as well as archived data from multiple sources – as […]
Off food-related illnesses for a while, owing to reader complaints… A healthy young man spent 3 weeks in northern Vietnam, traveling from Hanoi to Haiphong City, trekking for 3 days in Cat Ba National Park. He and his two companions remained well other than for mild bouts of traveller’s diarrhoea. Although he had fallen a […]
A healthy 6-year-old girl was referred for a single day of diarrhoea (2 episodes) along with 3 episodes of involuntary anal orangey discharge that stained her trousers. Her stool was also remarked to be watery, orange-brown and oily. She complained of having some abdominal cramps, but was otherwise well, with no nausea, fever or dehydration. […]
The second edition of the Commonwealth Science Conference is held in Singapore from 13-16 June, jointly organized by UK’s Royal Society and Singapore’s National Research Foundation. It is attended by over 400 scientists from over 40 states within the Commonwealth, with the majority of the presentations held at the Matrix in Biopolis. There are four […]
Second last plug for our essay and video contest, jointly organised by the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health and Ngee Ann Polytechnic, funded by many generous donors to our Antibiotics Awareness Fund. Details and replies to some queries below: Any original video 3 minutes or shorter, on the above theme. Group participation welcome […]
Certain malaria parasites have the ability to form a dormant liver stage, known as the hypnozoite – from the Greek words “hypnos” (sleep) and “zoon” (animal). In human malaria, some of the Plasmodium vivax and P. ovale sporozoites entering the blood from the bite of an infected Anopheles mosquito will remain behind in the liver as hypnozoites (the others develop into […]
A teenager developed persistent high fever (up to 39.5 degrees Celsius) two weeks after returning from a trip to a national park in Brunei. The other nine students and teacher-counsellor remained well other than occasional bouts of gastroenteritis. The school excursion had lasted a week, with two days spent camping in tents within the national […]
I recently gave a talk on antibiotic prescribing in primary care, and had a great discussion with many of the general practitioners (GPs) who attended the course (on a separate note, it is not at all clear that the best people to talk to GPs about antibiotic prescribing in primary care are hospital-based infectious diseases […]
Like many, I marvelled at the scope and ambition of the Hospital Microbiome Project, which is a large-scale longitudinal study of the microbial ecology of the Center for Care and Discovery (a hospital belonging to the University of Chicago), beginning from 2 months before the hospital’s opening in 2013 and stopping only 1 year afterwards. The […]
A whimsical piece below, with the caveat that different major outbreaks pose different investigative challenges and scientific questions. Good to have the opinions and thoughts of others. I have been involved in a few major outbreaks in Singapore over the past decade-and-half, and have often wondered whether it is better to organise and write up […]
MIPHIDIC 