The inaugural Courage Fund ID Conference kicked off yesterday evening with a series of plenary lectures at the Marina Mandarin Hotel in Singapore. This clinical and basic science infectious diseases conference is a first for Singapore in many ways: It was organised in partnership by the Singapore Infectious Diseases Initiative, the Institute for Infectious Diseases […]
The big news for antimicrobial resistance over the past week has been the decision by McDonald’s (the fast food chain) to use only antibiotic-free chicken in 2 years’ time. This will only affect the U.S. branches, although the company is also exploring phasing this in Europe. No signs of this happening in Singapore or the […]
Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) looks set to becoming Singapore’s biggest antibiotic-resistant bacterial challenge for the immediate future, even more so than other members of the multidrug-resistant bacteria “alphabet soup”, viz. MRSA, VRE, XDR-AB, XDR-PA, etc. What is one unexpected consequence of having patients with CRE in our hospitals? Well, it gets into our sewage system. I have […]
A question was raised regarding the prevalence of rapidly-growing mycobacteria (RGM) in Singapore following the previous post. Researchers in several countries have found that the prevalence of infections caused by RGM had been increasing over time, including in UK between 1995-2006, Taiwan between 2000-2008, Queensland (Australia) between 1999-2005, and in Minnesota (USA) between 1980-2009. Other than in […]
Measles has been in the news (even in the Straits Times) lately, because of the U.S. outbreak that originated from Disneyland in California. To briefly recap, at least 40 visitors/workers at Disneyland, California were exposed to measles in December last year and have developed the disease. The index case (or cases) has not been identified, […]
A year ago, a report was published on Public Health Action (the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease’s open access journal) by members of the Singapore Tuberculosis Elimination Programme (STEP) and Ministry of Health, looking at tuberculosis cases among Singapore residents by ethnicity, notified between 2002 and 2011. There were 15,622 resident cases of […]
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