Businesses play key part in people’s health: Experts
SINGAPORE — As countries grapple with the politics of providing universal health coverage, policymakers are also looking at what happens before citizens have to seek medical attention for non-communicable diseases and not ignoring the importance of keeping the population healthy.
This means getting industry players, such as those in the food and beverage sector, to take on more responsibility in delivering healthier options, said Professor Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, at the Ministerial Meeting on Universal Health Coverage yesterday.
He was moderating the Ministerial Roundtable, attended by 17 panellists, about learning points from the meeting held at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel.
The two-day conference on universal health coverage and its challenges, organised by the Health Ministry, was attended by health ministers, senior officials and experts from around the world.
The move to get industry players on board has played out differently in various places, the panellists noted.
In Hong Kong, for instance, the authorities have started to engage local companies to get them to voluntarily reduce the salt or sugar content in their products.
In Malaysia, the authorities are encouraging manufacturers to make the switch to alternative sweeteners such as stevia, noted its Deputy Health Minister Hilmi Yahaya.
Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham, the Paul Hamlyn chair of surgery at Imperial College who was invited by Prof Mahbubani to share his views, noted that managing human behaviour is the biggest challenge when it comes to tackling non-communicable diseases.
Historically, Prof Darzi said, behaviour has been changed through taxation and regulations. But the United Kingdom was still struggling with the “concept of nanny state versus infringing on people’s freedom” when it came to nudging people to change certain practices, he added.
Health Minister Gan Kim Yong noted that there was a lot of scope for Singapore to adopt further preventive measures for a healthier population.
“If you look around, our investments in health promotion and disease prevention, I think ... (are) actually significantly lower than the amount of money we spend on treating diseases,” he said during the discussion.
“We’ll need to take a holistic approach towards health promotion, taking into account how we can empower consumers so that they make the right choice.”
Necessary information should be given to consumers, he added, such as their caloric intake and what constitutes a healthy lifestyle.
Mr Gan said the authorities can look at government regulations, taxation and financial structures to encourage and shape consumer behaviour.
Singapore is also experimenting with the creation of an ecosystem that is pro-health. “We are finding ways to make healthy living the default way of life,” he said.
World Health Organization director-general Margaret Chan, another panellist, noted that treatment is prevention and called for closer collaboration between the public health and clinical sectors to tackle non-communicable diseases.
Summing up the discussion, Prof Mahbubani noted that as governments try to meet the public’s expectations about universal health coverage, they have to “deal with it in a sustainable manner that ensures public finances are not destroyed”.
“Maintaining that balance is a common challenge that has come through,” he said.
Commenting on the conclusion of the conference yesterday, Mr Gan said the meeting had been a very useful platform for ministers and delegates to exchange notes on tackling the challenges of providing universal health coverage.
“We learnt that it is not how many dollars we spend, but how we focus our investment that makes the most difference,” he added.
