Crises and Disasters in Singapore: What Matters? Or Does It?

Tan, Seng Ghee; Lai, Allen Yu-Hung

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2507047

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Singapore's healthcare industry 2.1.3 Disasters in Singapore. Singapore is a small island state with no natural resource, but is well-shielded from natural disasters such as earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis (Pelling and Uitto, 2001;Tan and Lai, 2014). However, Singapore remains vulnerable to manmade disasters and economic crises (Tan and Lai, 2014), and faces its own urgent problem, such as population ageing and hospital bed crisis (Lim et al, 2006).…”

Section: Ijdrbe 85mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Resilience of hospital facilities in Singapore’s healthcare industry: a pilot study

Low

Gao

Wong

2017

IJDRBE

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Purpose Singapore’s health-care infrastructure is suffering from increasing pressure due to population growth and a rapidly ageing population. This paper aims to assess the resilience of hospital facilities in Singapore’s health-care industry. The main attribute of resilience is adaptive capacity, which is also associated with vulnerability. Vulnerability is defined as the system’s susceptibility to threats that cause damage and affect its normal performance, while resilience is defined as the ability to anticipate and the capacity to change before a setback becomes obvious. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey was adopted for the study, with respondents drawn randomly from both the health-care professionals as well as the public. The questionnaire survey results from 83 respondents, consisting of 31 health-care professionals and 52 members of the public, are analysed in this pilot study. Findings Ninety-one per cent of the respondents perceived bed shortage as an indication of vulnerability. The survey results showed that bed shortages, high bed-occupancy and long waiting hours were perceived as indications of vulnerability. The top three vulnerabilities identified were Singapore’s ageing population, the fast-growing population and the increasing trend of chronic diseases in its population. From the results, respondents appeared doubtful about the resilience of Singapore’s public hospitals. On a positive note, Singapore residents are still, relatively speaking, confident of the quality of Singapore’s health-care delivery system, which can be translated as one with relatively strong community resilience. Originality/value In conclusion, it appears fair to say that the public perceive hospital facilities in Singapore’s health-care industry to be reasonably resilient, but expect further improvements to ensure continuous delivery of quality health-care services.

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Section: Ijdrbe 85mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One significant health disaster is the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2013. SARS infected 238 people, 33 of whom died of this contagious communicable disease in Singapore (Tan and Lai, 2014). The recent major disaster is the haze, which becomes a regular occurrence every year.…”

Section: Ijdrbe 85mentioning

confidence: 99%