SINGAPORE — Health Minister Ong Ye Kung will be chairing a press conference next week to give an update on Singapore’s preparedness in the mpox outbreak.

He announced this on the sidelines of an event to mark a partnership between MOH Holdings (MOHH) and SMRT Corporation to recognise healthcare professionals.

There have been 13 cases of mpox reported in Singapore so far in 2024, according to Ministry of Health’s weekly infectious diseases bulletin published on Aug 29. Seven cases were reported here in 2023. To date, all mpox infections here have been the less severe clade II infections.

Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, causes flu-like symptoms and pus-filled lesions on the body. A new sub-variant — clade I — has alarmed global health experts due to its ability to spread easily through close, personal contact.

Ong had said on Aug 17 that the mpox outbreak in Africa and other places is "very worrying", and that Singapore should expect the virus to arrive at its shores.

He had said the current risk of an outbreak in Asia and Singapore from Africa is low as there are no direct flights to the affected areas in the continent. But the virus, which has seen a rapid surge in several African countries, is expected to spread to the Middle East and Europe, which Singapore has flight connections to.

On Aug 14, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared mpox a global public health emergency for the second time in two years.

The current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has seen 27,000 cases and more than 1,100 deaths since January 2023.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the emergence of a new clade of mpox, its rapid spread in eastern DRC, and the reporting of cases in several neighbouring countries are "very worrying".

In the past month, more than 100 laboratory-confirmed cases of the new sub-variant have been reported in four countries neighbouring the DRC that have not reported mpox before: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

At the SMRT-MOHH event held at Bayfront MRT station, SMRT chairman Seah Moon Ming announced an initiative to give out 46,000 ez-link cards to all public, private and community care nurses in Singapore to thank them for their contributions. The $10 prepaid cards, which cost SMRT a total of $700,000, will be given out by the end of 2024.

Speaking on the SMRT-MOHH partnership, Seah said the ez-link cards for nurses are funded by SMRT’s savings from its Kaizen initiatives, which have saved the firm more than $100 million in productivity, reliability and safety improvements in the last year.

SMRT introduced the Japanese concept of kaizen, or continuous improvement, in 2018.

Practised by companies such as carmaker Toyota, kaizen empowers staff to suggest and make small improvements in their own areas of work, resulting in larger gains in a company’s efficiency and productivity.

As part of the partnership, MOHH’s Care to Go Beyond campaign will also be expanded within SMRT stations and mall premises to let the public learn more about the work of healthcare professionals in Singapore.

This aims to spark public interest in career opportunities within the sector, said SMRT.

Speaking on recruitment in Singapore’s healthcare sector, Ong said there is a constant need to hire, considering the ageing population here.

About seven per cent to eight per cent of Singapore’s student cohort go into healthcare, and healthcare courses in tertiary institutions are "all oversubscribed", he said, an indication that healthcare is "a very attractive sector".

"However, there is actually a percentage, not a small one, that after graduation didn’t come into healthcare... but we hope that some of these... over time, can join our sector. Give it a try."

He added that he hopes to reach this group and encourage them to try out the profession through the collaboration with SMRT.

MOHH chairwoman Lai Wei Lin stressed the importance of retaining staff, adding that MOHH partners merchants, including those from SMRT, to give special discounts to healthcare workers. 

Lai said: "I think that’s a very small but meaningful gesture of appreciation to our healthcare professionals. We are also working very hard on the retention after they come in. We do want our healthcare professionals to stay with us for the long haul, to work for many years, and to have a fulfilling career."

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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.