SINGAPORE'S NATIONAL STATEMENT AT THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY HIGH-LEVEL MEETING, 25 SEP 2025

President, Excellencies

1              For the longest time in history, health systems around the world are preoccupied with infectious diseases – from the Black Death, to HIV, to Ebola, to tuberculosis, to cholera – this has been our major challenge. But a big part of the solution lies outside of healthcare, which is to shape our living environment. It lies in better sanitation, clean water, better hygiene, and as a result, lives improve. But when lives improve, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) become a problem. It is associated with bad lifestyle, unhealthy food, lack of exercise. Again, the solution lies outside of health care, in population health, and this is an opportunity for the world to work together and demonstrate what we can achieve multilaterally in tackling NCDs. Singapore is committed to working with like-minded nations through the World Health Organization to address this challenge.

2              First, we can collectively implement better preventive care, encourage vaccination, health screening, establish best practices in food production, urban design and also long-term care for seniors.

3              Second, we should address new and emerging risk factors. Screen time addiction is linked to deteriorating mental health, which is affecting people, especially the young throughout the world. Also, the use of e-cigarettes or e-vaporisers, were bound to present severe but not yet fully known health risks.

4              Third, we can refocus the key measure of success in global healthcare beyond current KPIs, like infant mortality rates and life expectancy, which is associated with infectious diseases, to measuring the gap between lifespan and health span, which is associated with the effectiveness in tackling NCDs.

5              Whatever our collective action, we should always keep faith and focus on science and evidence, while rigorous debate is inherent in science. Nonetheless, science is an established common language for the world to engage and advance healthcare together. With digital technology and the proliferation of healthcare AI use cases, we can leverage data and empirical evidence to deliver better health outcomes. Our collective action on NCDs will reinvigorate international co-operation and bring us closer to the full achievement of the UN sustainable developmental goals.

6              Thank you.