The latest United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report [Link] ranks Singapore 18th out of 187 countries in the world in the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) for 2012.
The UN’s HDI is a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income indices to rank countries. It was developed in 1990 as an index to look beyond GDP growth as a measure of a country’s well-being. It is published by the UNDP annually and serves as a frame of reference for both social and economic development of countries in the world.
The 10 top countries in the world are:
1. Norway
2. Australia
3. US
4. Netherlands
5. Germany
6. New Zealand
7. Ireland
7. Sweden
9. Switzerland
10. Japan
Other Asian economies ahead of Singapore include South Korea (12th) and Hong Kong (13th).
One of the most glaring deficiencies for Singapore is the expected number of years of schooling, which registered 14.4 in the report. This is about two years less than the average of “very high HDI” countries (16.3 years). The expected years of schooling indicates the number of years of schooling that a child of school entrance age can expect to receive.
An analyst said, “This suggests a smaller proportion of Singaporeans attend university or graduate schools, as compared with its comparable peers despite its very high standing in terms of income per capita and life expectancy.”
Indeed, Minister Khaw Boon Wan seemed to discourage ITE and polytechnic graduates from pursuing a university degree at an ‘Our Singapore Conversation’ dialogue held on 4 May 2013.
Singaporeans do not need to be university graduates to be successful, he said.
“If they cannot find jobs, what is the point? You own a degree, but so what? That you can’t eat it. If that cannot give you a good life, a good job, it is meaningless,” he elaborated.
He was responding to a participant who said the government should set aside more university places for Institute of Technical Education and polytechnic graduates.
Said Mr Khaw, “Can you have a whole country where 100 per cent are graduates? I am not so sure.”
“What you do not want is to create huge graduate unemployment.”
In the past, PM Lee said that polytechnic graduates have many good options after leaving school, and they need not aim for university degrees.
Singapore may not have to be a “whole country where 100 per cent are graduates” but certainly, looking at the UNDP report, Singapore can do better in terms of the HDI component, “expected years of schooling”.
Mr Khaw may be interested to know that the “expected years of schooling” for the 3 Asian countries ahead of Singapore are:
Japan – 15.3
Korea – 17.2
Hong Kong – 15.5
http://www.tremeritus.com/2013/05/11/un-report-shows-sg-deficient-in-expected-years-of-schooling/
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Saturday, May 11, 2013
Monday, May 6, 2013
Singapore falls to record-low place in press freedom ranking
Singapore falls to record-low place in press freedom ranking
Yahoo! Newsroom
By Shah Salimat | Yahoo! Newsroom – Sat, May 4, 2013
Singapore fell 14 places to a record 149th position in terms of press freedom, according to an annual report by non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders (RWB).
Coming ahead of World Press Freedom Day, which was observed Friday, the report showed this is the city-state’s worst performance since the index was established in 2002.
On the list, Singapore is wedged in between Russia and Iraq, with Myanmar just two places behind. The former junta-led country jumped up 18 spots in this year’s ranking.
Neighbouring Malaysia dropped 23 places to 145th over repeated censorship efforts and a crackdown on the Bersih 3.0 protest in April. Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea stayed at the bottom three, while Finland stayed on top of the list followed by the Netherlands and Norway.
Mali was the biggest jumper, moving 74 spots down amid a military coup and subsequent media bias. Malawi was the biggest riser, moving 71 spots up, after an end to the Mutharika dictatorship marked by excesses and violence.
In this year's Freedom of The Press report published Wednesday by Freedom House, Singapore's press was rated "Not Free" and was ranked 153rd in the world, tied with Afghanistan, Iraq and Qatar. Norway and Sweden tied for tops, while North Korea and Turkmenistan tied for the bottom two.
Both reports come amid recent events that have rocked the media industry in Singapore. Outspoken academic Cherian George, who has called for more press freedom in the city-state, was denied tenure at Nanyang Technological University, sparking outrage among academics, colleagues and students.
Last month, comics artist Leslie Chew was arrested for alleged sedition, with charges relating to two comic strips, including one that contained the words “Malay population… Deliberately suppressed by a racist government.”
Filmmaker Lynn Lee was questioned for two videos she posted in January this year of interviews with former Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT) bus drivers He Jun Ling and Liu Xiang Ying. Both drivers alleged police abuse while they were held in custody.
Amid the continued rise of new media in Singapore, there have been several instances over the past year of letters of demand being sent to bloggers and online media commentators to apologise and take down remarks that allegedly defamed government officials or the courts.
Earlier this year, blogger Alex Au received a letter of demand from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s lawyer that prompted the writer to apologise and take down an article and 21 comments regarding the sale of software by town councils to a firm owned by the ruling People’s Action Party.
The Real Singapore, a user-generated content website, was also asked twice to post an apology over comments allegedly defaming Defence Minister Ng Eng Hean.
The Attorney General's Chambers also asked the website to post an apology for comments made by users over the case of China national Yuan Zhenghua, who was sentenced to 25 months jail for stealing a taxi and killing a cleaner at Changi Airport’s Budget terminal. The site has refused to put up the apology.
Yahoo! Newsroom
By Shah Salimat | Yahoo! Newsroom – Sat, May 4, 2013
Singapore fell 14 places to a record 149th position in terms of press freedom, according to an annual report by non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders (RWB).
Coming ahead of World Press Freedom Day, which was observed Friday, the report showed this is the city-state’s worst performance since the index was established in 2002.
On the list, Singapore is wedged in between Russia and Iraq, with Myanmar just two places behind. The former junta-led country jumped up 18 spots in this year’s ranking.
Neighbouring Malaysia dropped 23 places to 145th over repeated censorship efforts and a crackdown on the Bersih 3.0 protest in April. Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea stayed at the bottom three, while Finland stayed on top of the list followed by the Netherlands and Norway.
Mali was the biggest jumper, moving 74 spots down amid a military coup and subsequent media bias. Malawi was the biggest riser, moving 71 spots up, after an end to the Mutharika dictatorship marked by excesses and violence.
In this year's Freedom of The Press report published Wednesday by Freedom House, Singapore's press was rated "Not Free" and was ranked 153rd in the world, tied with Afghanistan, Iraq and Qatar. Norway and Sweden tied for tops, while North Korea and Turkmenistan tied for the bottom two.
Both reports come amid recent events that have rocked the media industry in Singapore. Outspoken academic Cherian George, who has called for more press freedom in the city-state, was denied tenure at Nanyang Technological University, sparking outrage among academics, colleagues and students.
Last month, comics artist Leslie Chew was arrested for alleged sedition, with charges relating to two comic strips, including one that contained the words “Malay population… Deliberately suppressed by a racist government.”
Filmmaker Lynn Lee was questioned for two videos she posted in January this year of interviews with former Singapore Mass Rapid Transit (SMRT) bus drivers He Jun Ling and Liu Xiang Ying. Both drivers alleged police abuse while they were held in custody.
Amid the continued rise of new media in Singapore, there have been several instances over the past year of letters of demand being sent to bloggers and online media commentators to apologise and take down remarks that allegedly defamed government officials or the courts.
Earlier this year, blogger Alex Au received a letter of demand from Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s lawyer that prompted the writer to apologise and take down an article and 21 comments regarding the sale of software by town councils to a firm owned by the ruling People’s Action Party.
The Real Singapore, a user-generated content website, was also asked twice to post an apology over comments allegedly defaming Defence Minister Ng Eng Hean.
The Attorney General's Chambers also asked the website to post an apology for comments made by users over the case of China national Yuan Zhenghua, who was sentenced to 25 months jail for stealing a taxi and killing a cleaner at Changi Airport’s Budget terminal. The site has refused to put up the apology.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Guy Stewart Callendar: Global warming discovery
Guy Stewart Callendar: Global warming discovery
By Zoe Applegate BBC News Online
Seventy-five years ago an amateur scientist made a breakthrough discovery in the field of climate change.
Guy Stewart Callendar linked global warming to CO2 emissions but his work went largely unnoticed at the time.
Now the anniversary of his discovery has been commemorated by two leading climate scientists.
Prof Phil Jones, from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and Dr Ed Hawkins, from the University of Reading, have published a paper looking at Callendar's legacy.
Prof Jones said the steam engineer's work was "groundbreaking".
Callendar, born in Montreal, Canada in 1898, made all his calculations by hand in his spare time, decades before the effects of global warming became widely debated.
The son of English physicist Hugh Longbourne Callendar, who studied thermodynamics, Callendar worked from his home in West Sussex
A steam engineer by profession, his research first appeared in the quarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in April 1938.
'Fundamental contribution'
Prof Jones, of the UEA's Climatic Research Unit, and Dr Hawkins, from Reading's National Centre for Atmospheric Science, have had their commemorative research paper on Callendar published in the same journal this month.
"Callendar was the first to discover that the planet had warmed," said Prof Jones.
"He collected world temperature measurements and suggested that this warming was related to carbon dioxide emissions."
This became known for a time as the "Callendar Effect".
He is still relatively unknown as a scientist but his contribution was fundamental to climate science today," said Prof Jones.
Callendar, who died in 1964, aged 66, thought global warming was good because it would stop what he called "deadly glaciers" returning and could boost the growth of crops at high latitude.
Although Callendar's estimates on global warming were quite simple, Dr Hawkins said they had proved fairly accurate compared with modern analysis.
However, some people remain sceptical about the relationship between carbon emissions and climate change first identified by Callendar.
Dr Hawkins said: "Scientists at the time also couldn't really believe that humans could impact such a large system as the climate - a problem that climate science still encounters from some people today, despite the compelling evidence to the contrary."
By Zoe Applegate BBC News Online
Seventy-five years ago an amateur scientist made a breakthrough discovery in the field of climate change.
Guy Stewart Callendar linked global warming to CO2 emissions but his work went largely unnoticed at the time.
Now the anniversary of his discovery has been commemorated by two leading climate scientists.
Prof Phil Jones, from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and Dr Ed Hawkins, from the University of Reading, have published a paper looking at Callendar's legacy.
Prof Jones said the steam engineer's work was "groundbreaking".
Callendar, born in Montreal, Canada in 1898, made all his calculations by hand in his spare time, decades before the effects of global warming became widely debated.
The son of English physicist Hugh Longbourne Callendar, who studied thermodynamics, Callendar worked from his home in West Sussex
A steam engineer by profession, his research first appeared in the quarterly journal of the Royal Meteorological Society in April 1938.
'Fundamental contribution'
Prof Jones, of the UEA's Climatic Research Unit, and Dr Hawkins, from Reading's National Centre for Atmospheric Science, have had their commemorative research paper on Callendar published in the same journal this month.
"Callendar was the first to discover that the planet had warmed," said Prof Jones.
"He collected world temperature measurements and suggested that this warming was related to carbon dioxide emissions."
This became known for a time as the "Callendar Effect".
He is still relatively unknown as a scientist but his contribution was fundamental to climate science today," said Prof Jones.
Callendar, who died in 1964, aged 66, thought global warming was good because it would stop what he called "deadly glaciers" returning and could boost the growth of crops at high latitude.
Although Callendar's estimates on global warming were quite simple, Dr Hawkins said they had proved fairly accurate compared with modern analysis.
However, some people remain sceptical about the relationship between carbon emissions and climate change first identified by Callendar.
Dr Hawkins said: "Scientists at the time also couldn't really believe that humans could impact such a large system as the climate - a problem that climate science still encounters from some people today, despite the compelling evidence to the contrary."
N Ireland Stormont Assembly becomes dull
Northern Ireland Assembly become dull?
25/4/013
Mark Simpson By Mark Simpson BBC Correspondent
Has the
The artist Noel Murphy who painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003 Artist Noel Murphy painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003
The retirement of some of the big names from Stormont politics has led to complaints that the Northern Ireland Assembly has become too dull.
It may be the most stable government in Northern Ireland for a generation, but some believe it is too boring.
In recent years a number of household names have either retired from politics or left Stormont.
These include former DUP leader Ian Paisley, Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams and Nobel peace prize winners John Hume and David Trimble.
At the same time, some of the most colourful speakers of recent times are no longer in the assembly, such as Ulster Unionist John Taylor, the SDLP's Seamus Mallon, the unionist Bob McCartney and the late David Ervine, former leader of the PUP.
The peace talks chairman, former senator George Mitchell, recently brought his son, Andrew, to watch a Stormont debate but left early after the teenager complained of boredom.
Senator Mitchell was delighted with what he saw; he said it proved that normal politics had been established.
So does it matter if politics is dull, as long as it delivers?
Monica McWilliams, a former assembly member for the Women's Coalition, believes Stormont should be judged on results rather than personalities.
She said: "I think it's really important to have a new generation of politicians.
"Unfortunately, everyone thinks it's very easy to have a go at politicians. They work night and day, they don't often get the credit for that.
"If you go to any assembly or legislative body in the world, it is boring. That's just the nature of legislative bodies."
The former UK Unionist leader, Bob McCartney, believes the politicians at Stormont could do much better.
He said: "They're dull, boring and second rate.
"They get up and they read a prepared statement that has no connection with what has gone before and even less with what is to come.
"Churchill used to say a good speech was a sustained logical argument, presented in the most attractive language possible.
'Sunlight'
"Now if you use that as your criteria for colour, there's very little colour in the assembly."
But is the lack of colour more to do with the stability of politics than the people involved?
Was the era of Paisley, Adams and Hume really a more charismatic political age?
The artist Noel Murphy who painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003, reckons the passage of time can colour views of the past.
He said: "The eyes of the world were on us. It's a great place when you're in the sunlight.
"Clinton was a friend and Mandela. But when the eyes of the world go away, being in the shadows is a much colder place.
"The personalities weren't necessarily charismatic, the events were.
"Today it's bland because the events are, not necessarily the characters."
Not everyone will agree with the County Antrim artist.
25/4/013
Mark Simpson By Mark Simpson BBC Correspondent
Has the The artist Noel Murphy who painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003 Artist Noel Murphy painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003
The retirement of some of the big names from Stormont politics has led to complaints that the Northern Ireland Assembly has become too dull.
It may be the most stable government in Northern Ireland for a generation, but some believe it is too boring.
In recent years a number of household names have either retired from politics or left Stormont.
These include former DUP leader Ian Paisley, Sinn Fein President, Gerry Adams and Nobel peace prize winners John Hume and David Trimble.
At the same time, some of the most colourful speakers of recent times are no longer in the assembly, such as Ulster Unionist John Taylor, the SDLP's Seamus Mallon, the unionist Bob McCartney and the late David Ervine, former leader of the PUP.
The peace talks chairman, former senator George Mitchell, recently brought his son, Andrew, to watch a Stormont debate but left early after the teenager complained of boredom.
Senator Mitchell was delighted with what he saw; he said it proved that normal politics had been established.
So does it matter if politics is dull, as long as it delivers?
Monica McWilliams, a former assembly member for the Women's Coalition, believes Stormont should be judged on results rather than personalities.
She said: "I think it's really important to have a new generation of politicians.
"Unfortunately, everyone thinks it's very easy to have a go at politicians. They work night and day, they don't often get the credit for that.
"If you go to any assembly or legislative body in the world, it is boring. That's just the nature of legislative bodies."
The former UK Unionist leader, Bob McCartney, believes the politicians at Stormont could do much better.
He said: "They're dull, boring and second rate.
"They get up and they read a prepared statement that has no connection with what has gone before and even less with what is to come.
"Churchill used to say a good speech was a sustained logical argument, presented in the most attractive language possible.
'Sunlight'
"Now if you use that as your criteria for colour, there's very little colour in the assembly."
But is the lack of colour more to do with the stability of politics than the people involved?
Was the era of Paisley, Adams and Hume really a more charismatic political age?
The artist Noel Murphy who painted the portrait of the first assembly, which was unveiled in 2003, reckons the passage of time can colour views of the past.
He said: "The eyes of the world were on us. It's a great place when you're in the sunlight.
"Clinton was a friend and Mandela. But when the eyes of the world go away, being in the shadows is a much colder place.
"The personalities weren't necessarily charismatic, the events were.
"Today it's bland because the events are, not necessarily the characters."
Not everyone will agree with the County Antrim artist.
Monday, April 1, 2013
If it ain’t broke, hurry and fix it: Interview with TTSH CEO
PROFESSOR Philip Choo, 54, CEO of Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), doesn’t take strong stands in a loud voice. He makes insightful remarks in gentle tones. He doesn’t hold forth at meetings. He rallies people behind the scenes.
The self-confessed introvert finds public speeches and functions especially wearying, and walks 12km thrice a week to decompress in solitude.
It was severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003 that brought out the leader in him.
Then head of general medicine at TTSH, he stepped up to the plate, took tough decisions to recall all doctors on leave, excused no one from duty, and donned the N95 mask himself in the wards daily.
As Sars claimed 33 lives and fevers raged around him, he believed he would not outlive the outbreak. But he did and was awarded a Public Service Star.
Ten years on, he never talks about Sars, having filed it away as a “difficult time”. But the lessons that have stayed with him have emboldened him to take unpopular decisions today.
He is now in the thick of restructuring TTSH and the National Healthcare Group (Regional Health) which oversees health care in the central region of Singapore and where he is deputy group CEO. He feels he is up against Singapore’s fast-ageing population and the surge in sufferers of multiple chronic diseases.
Worldwide, he notes, even the world’s richest countries are mired in health-care bills. In the United States, Europe and Japan, with 13, 17 and 23 per cent of people aged over 65 respectively, one of the largest areas of expenditure is now health care, with the cost likely to escalate as their populations grey further. In Singapore, about 9 per cent of the population is above 65 today, with numbers expected to triple by 2030.
He notes that Singapore’s current hospital-centric health-care system, as with most developed countries, is just too costly.
It is great at acute episodic care, say taking care of a road accident victim, but lousy for those living with longstanding chronic diseases, like stroke and heart failure, he charges.
“I know I’m on a failed model. Today, we all wait for patients with problems to come to us. But unless you break from that cycle, start to put in resources to maintain the health of the general population, you will end up broke, like where the rest of the world is today.”
He wants Singapore to be the exception.
Standardising health care
CONTROVERSIALLY, he is looking at bringing business principles for efficiency into health care. He talks about kaizen (Japanese continuous improvement philosophy) and “lean manufacturing” (systematically reducing waste) non-stop, which he learnt from the Toyota car factory in Japan during a study visit there in 2007. Over the past four years, he’s been busy introducing standardisation of care like assembly lines and categorising patients like car models.
He’s met with a chorus of outrage, he admits. “Standardisation” in health care is almost heresy to health-care workers, who have been taught to zoom in on the patient before them and offer individualised care, he notes.
But why should health care not follow the compulsory rule of business, which is to reduce variation, he argues. It’s entirely possible to plan as a system, as Disney theme parks and all hotels do, but deliver care in a personal manner.
“In health care, we already do that every single day. I roughly know what my patients need but I talk to them as individuals, demonstrating empathy,” he cites.
But won’t standardisation constrict care delivery since no two patients and diseases are created alike?
He disagrees. “You take what is best after research and experimentation and standardise it, so everybody gets the same good care every time. It’s the highest common denominator, not the lowest. Can you imagine flight safety with no standardisation, if we allow each pilot to check in his own way before take-off? Some days he does this much and other days he doesn’t? We’ll be horrified.”
Dr Kaizen
WHAT he’s done over the last few years is to divert almost a third of people who used to be admitted to TTSH elsewhere to be cared for in other settings.
Close to 70 per cent of all surgical procedures at TTSH, for example, are now done as day surgery.
Patients, who used to stay up to three days, have their care compacted into one. The moment their condition stabilises, patients are funnelled into community hospitals nearby. TTSH’s accident and emergency department also admits patients, for example with mild pneumonia, directly into the community hospitals. Teams have been sent in to expand care in nine nursing homes, so the ailing can be kept there.
He’s also working on identifying and grouping patients with similar needs together, taking a leaf from the Toyota plant, which he notes produces Lexuses, Camrys and Corollas all in the same assembly line because “they require roughly the same things”.
Of the central zone his National Healthcare Group (NHG) oversees, which has a total population of 1.4 million, only 350,000 have been treated at TTSH, its specialist clinics and nine poly- clinics. Using the data of the 350,000, he’s trying to categorise them into five groups – well, simple, complicated, serious, frail – based on how many chronic diseases they have and the level of complications.
With that, he’s designing a common template care model for each group. The aim: To maintain patients within each category as far as possible. For example, keeping the “well” healthy, preventing hospital admission for the “simple” and the “complicated” by phoning them often to check on them, cutting down admissions for the “serious” group by actively managing their care and preventing worsening of the “frail”.
After that, he plans to “get to know” the remaining 1.05 million who have never used public health care and are unknown to him.
“Today we don’t know them, we have to wait for them to become unwell to see us. The thinking is ‘I’m so busy, I’m not going to go out to look for more patients’. But we have to change that mindset as it represents a very expensive model of care we can’t afford,” he laments. “More knowledge, not less, is better. If I know my population and who is at risk but has not sought help, I can come up with specific intervention programmes.”
For starters, NHG is working with other agencies to do a door-to-door survey on Toa Payoh rental flat dwellers. They will list each resident’s health and social needs, offer them health screenings, and design a working model to deliver help to them in a coordinated fashion.
If there’s one thing he hopes to get done in his lifetime, it’s to get his new health-care model, offering good, affordable, standardised care, up and running.
Singapore, he believes, is about the only country able to plan for it right now. It still has a stable government able to think long- term, long-staying leaders at the operational level to carry it out and sufficient reserves to invest in the future, he says.
Old before his time
HE WAS the third of four children of a Singaporean general practitioner who practised in Kota Baru in Kelantan and a Malaysian housewife.
A year after the May 13, 1969 racial riots in Kuala Lumpur, his parents sent him to study here at age 10 with his siblings and brought them up by phone.
At St Michael’s Primary, St Joseph’s Institution and Catholic Junior College, he struggled with dyslexia and had to memorise facts up to 40 times for exams.
During school holidays in Kota Baru, watching the respect accorded to his father by the townsfolk, he was drawn to medicine – the only one among his siblings, who all worked in finance jobs.
As a University of Singapore medical student and young doctor, he found himself inexplicably gravitating towards older patients. “I can’t explain it but I feel comfortable with the elderly. I know what goes through their minds, I can understand what they say or don’t say.”
He chose to delve into geriatrics in Glasgow, a sub-speciality of internal medicine and family medicine that focuses on the care of elderly people, because he “didn’t want to choose between organs but wanted to see the whole patient”. His more practical peers dissuaded him. It was the antithesis of the “perfect specialisation” – old patients were usually poor, the working hours punishing, with little potential for going into private practice.
But he relished it, especially the challenge of caring for the frail elderly with vague bed histories and multiple problems, coupled often with mental issues and physical disabilities too.
He became Singapore’s first geriatrician in 1990 and worked towards setting up a dedicated department at TTSH and making geriatric medicine “an accepted speciality in its own right”. By 1994, he was head of department, then appointed divisional chairman of medicine a year later. Post-Sars, he was named chairman of the medical board from 2003 to 2011, before he assumed the CEO role two years ago.
Autumnal lessons
HE IS thankful for the retrospective life lessons attending to autumnal patients has bestowed on him. He has seen patients with 10 kids, all unwilling to look after them. And those with one kid who sacrificed everything to care for them. He’s surmised it all boils down to the depth of bonds forged. His conclusion: “You reap what you sow.”
He identifies so closely with his elderly charges that he has told off a woman complaining loudly about the inconvenience of her mother’s care within earshot of her daughter. He told her: “Stop what you’re doing. Your daughter will think this is the right way to treat her mother.” It resulted in an angry letter of complaint, he adds sheepishly.
The father of two children aged 22 and 19 – the older one is studying medicine here – who is separated from his family physician wife, spends a quarter of his time doing a couple of outpatient clinics and teaching once a week.
He reflects: “You get great joy when you work as a doctor but the change is actually limited to individual patients. But if you can change systems and mindsets, you broaden your reach a lot more. The issue is that the returns take a longer time to come back to you.”
He’s also reconciled to the naysaying. “If you are trying to change the system, you can expect a lot of noes because you are a deviation from the norm. Once you accept that as part of life, it’s fine,” he says with a shrug.
He doesn’t lose sleep or take the opposition personally. Sars and his older patients taught him to forge on, regardless.
suelong@sph.com.sg
http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/case-you-missed-it/story/if-it-ain%E2%80%99t-broke-hurry-and-fix-it-20130331
This story was first published in The Straits Times on March 29, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
China acknowledges 'cancer villages'
China acknowledges 'cancer villages'
BBC 23 Feb 2013
China's environment ministry appears to have acknowledged the existence of so-called "cancer villages" after years of public speculation about the impact of pollution in certain areas.
For years campaigners have said cancer rates in some villages near factories and polluted waterways have shot up.
There have been many calls for China to be more transparent on pollution.
The latest report from the environment ministry is entitled "Guard against and control risks presented by chemicals to the environment during the 12th Five-Year period (2011-2015)".
It says that the widespread production and consumption of harmful chemicals forbidden in many developed nations are still found in China.
"The toxic chemicals have caused many environmental emergencies linked to water and air pollution," it said.
The report goes on to acknowledge that such chemicals could pose a long-term risk to human health, making a direct link to the so-called "cancer villages".
"There are even some serious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions," it said.
Beijing smog
The BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing says that as China has experienced rapid development, stories about so-called cancer villages have become more frequent.
And China has witnessed growing public anger over air pollution and industrial waste caused by industrial development.
Media coverage of conditions in these so-called "cancer villages" has been widespread. In 2009, one Chinese journalist published a map identifying dozens of apparently affected villages.
In 2007 the BBC visited the small hamlet of Shangba in southern China where one scientist was studying the cause and effects of pollution on the village.
He found high levels of poisonous heavy metals in the water and believed there was a direct connection between incidences of cancer and mining in the area.
Until now, there has been little comment from the government on such allegations.
Environmental lawyer Wang Canfa, who runs a pollution aid centre in Beijing, told the AFP news agency that it was the first time the "cancer village" phrase had appeared in a ministry document.
Last month - Beijing - and several other cities - were blanketed in smog that soared past levels considered hazardous by the World Health Organisation.
The choking pollution provoked a public outcry and led to a highly charged debate about the costs of the country's rapid economic development, our correspondent says.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21545868
BBC 23 Feb 2013
China's environment ministry appears to have acknowledged the existence of so-called "cancer villages" after years of public speculation about the impact of pollution in certain areas.
For years campaigners have said cancer rates in some villages near factories and polluted waterways have shot up.
There have been many calls for China to be more transparent on pollution.
The latest report from the environment ministry is entitled "Guard against and control risks presented by chemicals to the environment during the 12th Five-Year period (2011-2015)".
It says that the widespread production and consumption of harmful chemicals forbidden in many developed nations are still found in China.
"The toxic chemicals have caused many environmental emergencies linked to water and air pollution," it said.
The report goes on to acknowledge that such chemicals could pose a long-term risk to human health, making a direct link to the so-called "cancer villages".
"There are even some serious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions," it said.
Beijing smog
The BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing says that as China has experienced rapid development, stories about so-called cancer villages have become more frequent.
And China has witnessed growing public anger over air pollution and industrial waste caused by industrial development.
Media coverage of conditions in these so-called "cancer villages" has been widespread. In 2009, one Chinese journalist published a map identifying dozens of apparently affected villages.
In 2007 the BBC visited the small hamlet of Shangba in southern China where one scientist was studying the cause and effects of pollution on the village.
He found high levels of poisonous heavy metals in the water and believed there was a direct connection between incidences of cancer and mining in the area.
Until now, there has been little comment from the government on such allegations.
Environmental lawyer Wang Canfa, who runs a pollution aid centre in Beijing, told the AFP news agency that it was the first time the "cancer village" phrase had appeared in a ministry document.
Last month - Beijing - and several other cities - were blanketed in smog that soared past levels considered hazardous by the World Health Organisation.
The choking pollution provoked a public outcry and led to a highly charged debate about the costs of the country's rapid economic development, our correspondent says.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-21545868
China's 'leftover women', unmarried at 27
China's 'leftover women', unmarried at 27
By Mary Kay Magistad PRI's The World, Beijing
Over 27? Unmarried? Female? In China, you could be labelled a "leftover woman" by the state - but some professional Chinese women these days are happy being single.
Huang Yuanyuan is working late at her job in a Beijing radio newsroom. She's also stressing out about the fact that the next day, she'll turn 29.
"Scary. I'm one year older," she says. "I'm nervous."
Why?
"Because I'm still single. I have no boyfriend. I'm under big pressure to get married."
Huang is a confident, personable young woman with a good salary, her own apartment, an MA from one of China's top universities, and a wealth of friends.
Still, she knows that these days, single, urban, educated women like her in China are called "sheng nu" or "leftover women" - and it stings.
She feels pressure from her friends and her family, and the message gets hammered in by China's state-run media too.
Even the website of the government's supposedly feminist All-China Women's Federation featured articles about "leftover women" - until enough women complained.
State-run media started using the term "sheng nu" in 2007. That same year the government warned that China's gender imbalance - caused by selective abortions because of the one-child policy - was a serious problem.
National Bureau of Statistics data shows there are now about 20 million more men under 30 than women under 30.
"Ever since 2007, the state media have aggressively disseminated this term in surveys, and news reports, and columns, and cartoons and pictures, basically stigmatising educated women over the age of 27 or 30 who are still single," says Leta Hong-Fincher, an American doing a sociology PhD at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Census figures for China show that around one in five women aged 25-29 is unmarried.
The proportion of unmarried men that age is higher - over a third. But that doesn't mean they will easily match up, since Chinese men tend to "marry down", both in terms of age and educational attainment.
"There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women," says Huang Yuanyuan. "The people left are A-quality women and D-quality men. So if you are a leftover woman, you are A-quality."
But it's the "A-quality" of intelligent and educated women that the government most wants to procreate, according to Leta Hong-Fincher. She cites a statement on population put out by the State Council - China's cabinet - in 2007.
"It said China faced unprecedented population pressures, and that the overall quality of the population is too low, so the country has to upgrade the quality of the population."
Some local governments in China have taken to organising matchmaking events, where educated young women can meet eligible bachelors.
The goal is not only to improve the gene pool, believes Fincher, but to get as many men paired off and tied down in marriage as possible - to reduce, as far as possible, the army of restless, single men who could cause social havoc.
But the tendency to look down on women of a certain age who aren't married isn't exclusively an attitude promoted by the government.
Chen (not her real name), who works for an investment consulting company, knows this all too well.
She's single and enjoying life in Beijing, far away from parents in a conservative southern city who, she says, are ashamed that they have an unmarried 38-year-old daughter.
"They don't want to take me with them to gatherings, because they don't want others to know they have a daughter so old but still not married," she says.
"They're afraid their friends and neighbours will regard me as abnormal. And my parents would also feel they were totally losing face, when their friends all have grandkids already."
Chen's parents have tried setting her up on blind dates. At one point her father threatened to disown her if she wasn't married before the end of the year.
Now they say if she's not going to find a man, she should come back home and live with them.
Chen knows what she wants - someone who is "honest and responsible", and good company, or no-one at all.
Meanwhile, the state-run media keep up a barrage of messages aimed at just this sort of "picky" educated woman.
"Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult," reads an excerpt from an article titled, Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy, posted on the website of the All-China Federation of Women in March 2011.
It continues: "These girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realise that as women age, they are worth less and less. So by the time they get their MA or PhD, they are already old - like yellowed pearls."
Ouch.
The All-China Federation of Women used to have more than 15 articles on its website on the subject of "leftover women" - offering tips on how to stand out from a crowd, matchmaking advice, and even a psychological analysis of why a woman would want to marry late.
In the last few months, it has dropped the term from its website, and now refers to "old" unmarried women (which it classes as over 27, or sometimes over 30), but the expression remains widely used elsewhere.
"It's caught on like a fad, but it belittles older, unmarried women - so the media should stop using this term, and should instead respect women's human rights," says Fan Aiguo, secretary general of the China Association of Marriage and Family Studies, an independent group that is part of the All-China Federation of Women.
If it sounds odd to call women "leftover" at 27 or 30, China has a long tradition of women marrying young. But the age of marriage has been rising, as it often does in places where women become more educated.
In 1950, the average age for urban Chinese women to marry for the first time was just under 20. By the 1980s it was 25, and now it's... about 27.
A 29-year-old marketing executive, who uses the English name Elissa, says being single at her age isn't half bad.
"Living alone, I can do whatever I like. I can hang out with my good friends whenever I like," she says. "I love my job, and I can do a lot of stuff all by myself - like reading, like going to theatres.
"I have many single friends around me, so we can spend a lot of time together."
Sure, she says, during a hurried lunch break, her parents would like her to find someone, and she has gone on a few blind dates, for their sake. But, she says, they've been a "disaster".
"I didn't do these things because I wanted to, but because my parents wanted it, and I wanted them to stop worrying. But I don't believe in the blind dates. How can you get to know a person in this way?"
Elissa says she'd love to meet the right man, but it will happen when it happens. Meanwhile, life is good - and she has to get back to work.
Mary Kay Magistad is the East Asia correspondent for The World - a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH
'
Who are you calling "leftover"? Huang Yuanyuan (front) and her colleague Wang Tingting
The best time to get married is
Nine out of 10 men in China think women should get married before 27
Sixty per cent say the ideal time is 25-27
One per cent believe the best age for a woman to get married is 31-35
Source: 2010 National Marriage Survey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21320560
Flashback: America's 'leftover women' furore
Cover of Newsweek magazine from June 1986, with the headline "The Marriage Crunch"
In the US, women of a certain age might remember a 1986 Newsweek article that said women who weren't married by 40 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of finding a husband.
It created a wave of anxiety in educated, professional women at the time, and was widely quoted - e.g. in the film Sleepless in Seattle.
Newsweek eventually admitted it was wrong, and a follow-up study found that two-thirds of the single, college-educated American women who were 40 in 1986 had married by 2010.
By Mary Kay Magistad PRI's The World, Beijing
Over 27? Unmarried? Female? In China, you could be labelled a "leftover woman" by the state - but some professional Chinese women these days are happy being single.
Huang Yuanyuan is working late at her job in a Beijing radio newsroom. She's also stressing out about the fact that the next day, she'll turn 29.
"Scary. I'm one year older," she says. "I'm nervous."
Why?
"Because I'm still single. I have no boyfriend. I'm under big pressure to get married."
Huang is a confident, personable young woman with a good salary, her own apartment, an MA from one of China's top universities, and a wealth of friends.
Still, she knows that these days, single, urban, educated women like her in China are called "sheng nu" or "leftover women" - and it stings.
She feels pressure from her friends and her family, and the message gets hammered in by China's state-run media too.
Even the website of the government's supposedly feminist All-China Women's Federation featured articles about "leftover women" - until enough women complained.
State-run media started using the term "sheng nu" in 2007. That same year the government warned that China's gender imbalance - caused by selective abortions because of the one-child policy - was a serious problem.
National Bureau of Statistics data shows there are now about 20 million more men under 30 than women under 30.
"Ever since 2007, the state media have aggressively disseminated this term in surveys, and news reports, and columns, and cartoons and pictures, basically stigmatising educated women over the age of 27 or 30 who are still single," says Leta Hong-Fincher, an American doing a sociology PhD at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Census figures for China show that around one in five women aged 25-29 is unmarried.
The proportion of unmarried men that age is higher - over a third. But that doesn't mean they will easily match up, since Chinese men tend to "marry down", both in terms of age and educational attainment.
"There is an opinion that A-quality guys will find B-quality women, B-quality guys will find C-quality women, and C-quality men will find D-quality women," says Huang Yuanyuan. "The people left are A-quality women and D-quality men. So if you are a leftover woman, you are A-quality."
But it's the "A-quality" of intelligent and educated women that the government most wants to procreate, according to Leta Hong-Fincher. She cites a statement on population put out by the State Council - China's cabinet - in 2007.
"It said China faced unprecedented population pressures, and that the overall quality of the population is too low, so the country has to upgrade the quality of the population."
Some local governments in China have taken to organising matchmaking events, where educated young women can meet eligible bachelors.
The goal is not only to improve the gene pool, believes Fincher, but to get as many men paired off and tied down in marriage as possible - to reduce, as far as possible, the army of restless, single men who could cause social havoc.
But the tendency to look down on women of a certain age who aren't married isn't exclusively an attitude promoted by the government.
Chen (not her real name), who works for an investment consulting company, knows this all too well.
She's single and enjoying life in Beijing, far away from parents in a conservative southern city who, she says, are ashamed that they have an unmarried 38-year-old daughter.
"They don't want to take me with them to gatherings, because they don't want others to know they have a daughter so old but still not married," she says.
"They're afraid their friends and neighbours will regard me as abnormal. And my parents would also feel they were totally losing face, when their friends all have grandkids already."
Chen's parents have tried setting her up on blind dates. At one point her father threatened to disown her if she wasn't married before the end of the year.
Now they say if she's not going to find a man, she should come back home and live with them.
Chen knows what she wants - someone who is "honest and responsible", and good company, or no-one at all.
Meanwhile, the state-run media keep up a barrage of messages aimed at just this sort of "picky" educated woman.
"Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult," reads an excerpt from an article titled, Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy, posted on the website of the All-China Federation of Women in March 2011.
It continues: "These girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realise that as women age, they are worth less and less. So by the time they get their MA or PhD, they are already old - like yellowed pearls."
Ouch.
The All-China Federation of Women used to have more than 15 articles on its website on the subject of "leftover women" - offering tips on how to stand out from a crowd, matchmaking advice, and even a psychological analysis of why a woman would want to marry late.
In the last few months, it has dropped the term from its website, and now refers to "old" unmarried women (which it classes as over 27, or sometimes over 30), but the expression remains widely used elsewhere.
"It's caught on like a fad, but it belittles older, unmarried women - so the media should stop using this term, and should instead respect women's human rights," says Fan Aiguo, secretary general of the China Association of Marriage and Family Studies, an independent group that is part of the All-China Federation of Women.
If it sounds odd to call women "leftover" at 27 or 30, China has a long tradition of women marrying young. But the age of marriage has been rising, as it often does in places where women become more educated.
In 1950, the average age for urban Chinese women to marry for the first time was just under 20. By the 1980s it was 25, and now it's... about 27.
A 29-year-old marketing executive, who uses the English name Elissa, says being single at her age isn't half bad.
"Living alone, I can do whatever I like. I can hang out with my good friends whenever I like," she says. "I love my job, and I can do a lot of stuff all by myself - like reading, like going to theatres.
"I have many single friends around me, so we can spend a lot of time together."
Sure, she says, during a hurried lunch break, her parents would like her to find someone, and she has gone on a few blind dates, for their sake. But, she says, they've been a "disaster".
"I didn't do these things because I wanted to, but because my parents wanted it, and I wanted them to stop worrying. But I don't believe in the blind dates. How can you get to know a person in this way?"
Elissa says she'd love to meet the right man, but it will happen when it happens. Meanwhile, life is good - and she has to get back to work.
Mary Kay Magistad is the East Asia correspondent for The World - a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH
'Who are you calling "leftover"? Huang Yuanyuan (front) and her colleague Wang Tingting
The best time to get married is
Nine out of 10 men in China think women should get married before 27
Sixty per cent say the ideal time is 25-27
One per cent believe the best age for a woman to get married is 31-35
Source: 2010 National Marriage Survey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21320560
Flashback: America's 'leftover women' furore
Cover of Newsweek magazine from June 1986, with the headline "The Marriage Crunch"
In the US, women of a certain age might remember a 1986 Newsweek article that said women who weren't married by 40 had a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than of finding a husband.
It created a wave of anxiety in educated, professional women at the time, and was widely quoted - e.g. in the film Sleepless in Seattle.
Newsweek eventually admitted it was wrong, and a follow-up study found that two-thirds of the single, college-educated American women who were 40 in 1986 had married by 2010.
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