ABSTRACT
Along with other more populous and economically dynamic countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the tiny island city-state of Singapore (land area: 710 km2; population five million) completed its epidemiologic transition in a very short time. Whereas tuberculosis and pneumonia were the two leading causes of death in the 1950s and 1960s, chronic, non- communicable diseases (NCDs) like cancer, heart disease and stroke are now the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. To appreciate how far Singapore has come, one has only to note that average life expectancy has risen to 81.4 years in 2010, from 62 years in 1957 (the earliest that such a statistic was published), and infant mortality is 2.2 per 1,000 live births, down from an appalling 82 per 1,000 live births in 1950 (Ministry of Health 2010a). The World Health Statistics 2010 ranked Singapore second lowest for infant mortality and ninth highest for life expectancy at birth (World Health Organization 2010:48).
