Govt is underspending on preventive care immunisation....

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

This type of savings on this area is short sight and eventually will cost our society dearly.

Take HPV vaccination which prevents the majority of cervical cancer is provided
free of charge by the govt most developed countries and can save the govt millions in
to treat cervical cancer later on.

hepatitis B which is common among asians and can lead to liver failure can also
be prevented by vaccination.

Running a good comprehensive immunisation programme that includes important vaccines
recently developed can lead to far better outcomes for our society. When done at a national
it can lead to far higher protection rates and benefits of cost savings due to economy of scale.
Longer term it canlead to savings for the healthcare system as a whole.

Singapore's immunisation at the national level is about where it was in the 1980s with little
progress as the PAP does not like to spend on healthcare. You can see the difference in level
of immunisation of a typical developed country e.g. UK:

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1040.aspx?CategoryID=67

Includes free immunisation for seasonal flu and pneumococcal for every child. The first time I heard
of pneumococcal was when my friend's child died from it due to the absence of a govt programme
to provide this.

We can spend money on expensive weapons like Aster 30 and F35...Apaches ...and on sholarships for
foreign students but there never seem to be enough money to improve healthcare in Singapore.


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