Singapore Diary. Part 3: Press briefing and Alexandra Hospital

Continued from Part 2: Arrival in Singapore

Monday, July 23, 2007

Standing around in the lobby of the Gallery Hotel, I chatted with author Josef Woodman and a variety of international media including Vernon Baxter (Medical Times Middle East in Dubai), C. Ramesh (The Hindu, Chennai, India), Rashid Ali Khan (Associated Press of Pakistan), Junie Lauw (Harian Andalas, Indonesia), Gulveen Aulakh (The Economic Times, India) and Phan Kim Son (Saigon Tiep Thi). I began right away to form a broader perspective on international medical travel. While traveling abroad for medical care from the US is still a novel, fringe concept, it's a way of life for the middle class and above from countries with poor health care infrastructure. Time and again when I asked hospital administrators in Singapore where their international patients came from they cited Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and other developing countries. Rich Arab countries were part of the picture, too, but it was relatively rare to hear of European or American patients other than ex-pats living in the region.

A bus took us to another hotel, next to the Singapore Tourism Board's office, and we heard presentations from Singapore Medicine's Dr. Jason Yap, Jim Plouffe, a Canadian who is Editor-in-Chief for Reader's Digest in Asia, and Kevin Tan from Singapore's Economic Development Board. They succeeded in portraying Singapore as a place that has its act together. I've posted a recording of Tan's talk here and Plouffe's here. I'll post the Yap audio within a few days. The reporters weren't terribly aggressive --there were almost no questions for the speakers.

After the morning session we went in groups to lunch. Many of the reporters were Muslim and went out to a halal restaurant. Others of us went to lunch at the hotel, which was a sumptous buffet from a variety of regional cuisines. As I soon found out --lunches and dinners like this were a feature of the week--Singaporeans love to eat and don't mind saying so.

The afternoon session featured a press conference where Jason Yap and Josef Woodman discussed the just-released Singapore edition of Patients Beyond Borders, followed by an opportunity to interview a few people they'd brought in. But since they were all folks I'd either interviewed already or were on my schedule (Woodman, Dan Snyder, Steve Tucker) I just chatted with some of the reporters and camera crews.

After it was all done I went to Alexandra Hospital, which I'll write up separately. It's not on the usual destination list for Westerners since it mainly serves the local population, but I thought that would make it an interesting baseline.

When the tour was done I finally had a chance to rest for a few minutes before going out to dinner at VivoCity, a brand new mall that is billed as "Singapore's Largest Retail and Lifestyle Destination," which seems a fair description. Woodman, Baxter, a couple of Singapore Tourism guides and I went to a Chinese herbal restaurant where each dish was supposed to help us prevent or treat an ailment. I felt fine before and after. Actually my stomach was feeling a little weak, which seems to be the main effect I feel from jet lag.

Back at the hotel I was tired but not sleepy. I stayed up and used Skype to call folks back in the US for mere pennies.

See Part 4: ParkwayHealth and National Healthcare Group