Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Community Development, Youth and Sports Minister, revealed that Singapore continues to develop the specialty, as it aims to tackle the challenges pertaining to the area of emergency care. He inaugurated the International Conference on Emergency Medicine in Singapore. He shared that sometimes patients requiring inpatient care have to keep waiting for a bed.

Public hospitals are being afflicted by this problem in Singapore. Responsiveness is another problem which needs to be tackled. Medical emergencies usually occur at home, at the workplace and in public places and on the roads and highways.

In these cases, the first line of care is initiated by the family members, neighbours, co- workers and passers-by. He requested them that the initial care of the ten most common emergencies should be addressed and the community should be educated with important skills like cardiopulmonary resuscitation and using automated external defibrillator.

Minister Balakrishnan said, “As societies change and age, there will be constant developments in many areas of emergency care such as observation medicine, airway management, emergency care given to children, patient safety, emergencies that occur in the elderly, medico-legal issues, and the list goes on”.