The Singapore success story

SINGAPORE is the best place in the world for a child to be born.

It has the lowest mortality rate - 2.5 per 1,000 births - for children under five years old in the world, according to the study published in the medical journal The Lancet. The study compared the mortality rates of children under five in 187 countries.

Figures for other developed countries like Britain and the United States stand at 5.3 and 6.7, respectively.

These figures stand in stark contrast to countries like Laos (68.3), China (15.4) and India (62.6).

Singapore has come a long way from 1960, when 34.9 babies in every 1,000 died before they were a year old. Singapore's success in sharply reducing the mortality rate in recent decades can be attributed to many factors.

A big plus has been the ability of the country to meet the basic needs of its population, which include good housing, clean water, proper sanitation services and other public health-care needs.

'Improved prenatal care, safe delivery practices and medical advancement are some of the immediate factors,' said Assistant Professor of Sociology Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan from the School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University.

Clinical Associate Professor Ong Hian Tat, a senior consultant at the University Children's Medical Institute, National University Hospital, mentioned breast-feeding and childhood screening programmes as factors in lowering the child mortality rate.

'Emphasis on the beneficial effects of breast-feeding has led to better nutrition provided for all the babies and infants.

'Nationwide childhood screening programmes have also allowed us to detect some of the childhood diseases early, resulting in better treatment outcomes,' he said.

Prof Bussarawan added that a decline in infant mortality rates was a good indicator of Singapore's socioeconomic development, access to health care and women's socioeconomic status.

And the focus on the less well-off has also paid off.

'Singapore is doing better than some other developed countries because we have our focus of giving optimal medical care to the less advantaged section of our population and we have quality and accessible subsidised perinatal and paediatric care,' said Associate Professor Tan Kok Hian.

He is the head of perinatal audit and epidemiology at KK Women's and Children's Hospital.

JANICE TAI (Straits Times)

Singapore No. 1 in Competitiveness

SINGAPORE has jumped ahead of Hong Kong and the United States to snatch the top spot in a closely watched global ranking of economic competitiveness.

The Republic edged ahead of its rivals to assume pole position for the first time in what the compiler of the annual rankings, Swiss business school IMD, is calling a photo finish.

The gap between the three in this latest assessment of the world's economies - which places Hong Kong second and the US third - is less than 1 per cent.

This year's rankings are an upset to what has become the traditional pecking order and mark the first time since 1994 that the US has failed to trounce the competition.

For most of the 1990s and early 2000s Singapore has ranked second, but in recent years it has alternated with Hong Kong for second and third place.

IMD said Singapore and Hong Kong 'displayed great resilience through the crisis... and are now taking full advantage of strong expansion in the surrounding Asian region'. It was particularly impressed with Singapore's 13 per cent growth in the first quarter of this year.

While 'it's a tango between Hong Kong and Singapore at the top' of the rankings, Singapore's ability to utilise its competitive advantages and improve on its weaknesses was what gave it the edge over Hong Kong this year, according to Ms Suzanne Rosselet-McCauley, deputy director of the IMD World Competitiveness Centre.

NYP's ice cream licks the big guns at awards

The NYP team's 'green tea laced with aloe vera' recipe beat industry names from Slovenia and the United States to emerge tops in the best new ice cream category at the inaugural IDF Dairy Innovation Awards in Austria, trumping major players such as Dreyer's Grand and Haagen-Dazs.

The awards, which celebrate innovation in the global dairy industry, is an initiative by the International Dairy Federation - which currently accounts for more than 80 per cent of the world's milk production - and the FoodBev Media's Dairy Innovation magazine.

This year's competition attracted more than 170 entries from 29 countries in 12 categories, including best new cheese and best new dairy drink.

NYP's winning ice cream flavour was developed by four students and two lecturers from the Food Science Programme of the polytechnic's School of Chemical and Life Sciences (SCL).

One team member, student Laura Lim, 20, who will graduate from NYP later this month, said: 'I hope we are successful as we put in six months of hard work to come up with the product. We are confident that it will be popular in the mass market.'

The others in the team are students Chye Shan Shan, 20, Chow Yina, 22, and Gan Shi Wei, 20, and another lecturer Richard Khaw, 39.