South-East Asia (Page 1,552)

SINGAPORE: The Singapore Police Force (SPF) appealed for information on Monday (Aug 7) on the whereabouts of a 13-year-old girl who has been missing for five days.

Chua Li Fang Shlly was last seen near 51 Edgedale Plains in Punggol on Aug 2.

Anyone with information can dial the police hotline at 1800 255 0000 or submit the information online.

All information will be kept strictly confidential, SPF said.

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SINGAPORE: A lion dance troupe from Singapore emerged champion at the Genting World Lion Dance Championships on Sunday (Aug 6), breaking a 13-year winning streak held by Malaysian teams. 

Singapore’s Yiwei Athletic Association fielded two teams to compete at the three-day championship organised by Resorts World Genting in Malaysia.

Its Team B secured the win with 9.73 points at the finals on Sunday afternoon, thanks to its flexibility in pile jumping, successfully navigating challenging movements on the tightrope, as well as being able to present the lion’s expressions of joy, anger, surprise and doubt, according to a China Press report. 

Meanwhile, the association’s Team A came in third with 9.58 points. 

The Khuan Loke Dragon and Lion Dance Association from Selangor in Malaysia was second with 9.64 points. 

The triumph caps a string of wins by Yiwei over the past years. 

A team from the association won the first Prime Minister’s Cup International High Pole Lion Dance Championship in Kuala Lumpur in September last year, taking home the top prize of RM38,000 (US$8,300).

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SINGAPORE: Over seven years, a teenager-turned-young adult preyed sexually on those around him – beginning with minors at a playground and progressing to schoolmates and his bunkmates in National Service.

The man, now 24, pleaded guilty in the High Court on Monday (Aug 7) to 10 charges, which include sexual penetration of minors and molestation. Another 33 charges will be considered in sentencing.

The court heard that the accused was between 14 and 21 at the time of his offending against at least 28 victims that the prosecution placed into five groups.

He first preyed sexually on the first group – children in his neighbourhood – from 2013. He forced a seven-year-old girl to perform sex acts on him while pretending to play hide and seek.

He stopped his offending against the children in this group after a few years, as he was concerned that they might tell their parents about him.

The second group of victims were classmates and schoolmates in his secondary school.

When he was serving national service at the age of 19 and 20, he molested his bunkmates – the third group of victims – as they slept.

He also molested a classmate while at another school at the age of 21, and began targeting strangers he met online or chanced on.

CONDUCT CAUGHT

The offender’s conduct did not go unnoticed. As early as 2012, his secondary school received a report about his alleged sexual offence and indecent exposure.

He was given a verbal warning, his parent was informed and he was given counselling by the school.

He was reported by a victim to the school authorities in 2013 and he was temporarily suspended. He was told to seek further counselling and his mother took him to an external counselling centre.

The school found out again in 2014 that the offender had molested boys at a school camp. He was suspended by the school.

The offender was suspended again by his school in 2015 after another victim made a report of molestation.

The offender was arrested a few times in 2020 and released on police bail after victims made police reports.

It was only in October 2020, when a victim confided in her teacher about what the offender did against her as a child, that the offender was re-arrested and remanded.

At one point in 2020, the offender had entered his secondary school wearing his old school uniform to avoid being stopped by security.

He targeted a 13-year-old boy, luring him to a secluded area by pretending he was doing an interview, before photographing his hands and feet for his own gratification.

He then molested the boy and put his nose on the boy’s bare feet on the pretext of taking a “selfie”.

A psychiatrist with the Institute of Mental Health found that the offender had a fetish for the hands and feet of boys in lower secondary school, but had no mental illness or intellectual disability.

The psychiatrist added that the offender had a risk of reoffending against male teenagers and tends to choose victims who are less mature and more vulnerable.

The psychiatrist added that “based on the prior counselling and interventions received” by the offender, he did not appear “to have received adequate treatment”.

Deputy Public Prosecutors Chong Kee En and Tin Shu Min sought 15 to 20 years’ jail and at least six strokes of the cane, while defence lawyers Josephus Tan, Josiah Zee and Cory Wong of Invictus Law sought not more than 13 to 15 years’ jail and not more than six strokes.

Mr Chong said the accused had a long duration of offending against multiple victims “in almost every stage of his adolescence and approaching adult life”.

He said the man’s borderline intelligence was not mitigating, and said the claim by the defence that the offender was himself a sexual assault victim as a boy was “not quite borne out” by investigations.

Defence lawyer Mr Josephus Tan said the defence was not very far apart in terms of the sentences sought.

“But we say we have to be fair. When some of these offences were committed, he himself was a juvenile,” he said, charging that “the system failed him when he was young” as there was “no intervention”.

The judge will deliver her sentence at a later date.

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SINGAPORE: More patients will be able to receive hospital-type care at home with the expansion of a “virtual” ward pilot programme to more public healthcare institutions, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) and MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT) on Monday (Aug 7). 

The Mobile Inpatient Care-at-Home (MIC@Home) pilot, first launched in April 2022, offers patients the option to be cared for in their own homes instead of a hospital ward. 

Selected patients with conditions classified under general medicine, like skin infections, can be admitted to a “virtual” ward, where they will have round-the-clock access to care delivered by a team of healthcare professionals via teleconsultations and home visits until deemed fit for discharge. 

Following its implementation at hospitals under the National University Health System, Singapore General Hospital and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, MIC@Home has been expanded to four more hospitals: Changi General Hospital (CGH), KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), Sengkang General Hospital (SKH) and Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH).

“The pilot will bolster future hospital planning and add bed capacity buffer for the healthcare system,” said MOHT, adding that MIC@Home serves to provide appropriate care for patients in a more comfortable environment without sacrificing care outcomes. 

“The care they receive, as well as resulting outcomes, are expected to be non-inferior to that in hospitals.” 

As of June 2023, around 1,000 patients have benefitted from the programme, resulting in an estimated savings of 7,000 bed days.

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SINGAPORE: A doctor was handed a three-month suspension by the Court of Three Judges on Monday (Aug 7), over his failure to make a seated patient lie down before performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on him in 2017.

The asthmatic patient, who had gone to his clinic for breathlessness and went into cardiac arrest, later died in hospital.

Dr Ho Tze Woon was practising as a locum or a stand-in doctor at the Central 24-Hr Clinic (Yishun) on Jan 14, 2017.

While he was on duty, the patient came in complaining of breathlessness. Dr Ho assessed that the patient was having an asthma attack and asked a clinic assistant to administer a nebuliser treatment.

This is a type of treatment administered with a device that turns liquid medicine into a mist which is inhaled.

While the treatment was being administered, the patient who was seated on a chair suffered cardiac arrest and fainted. 

Dr Ho began performing CPR on the patient while he was still seated.

Paramedics later arrived and took the patient to hospital, but the man died a week later.

Dr Ho was later charged under the Medical Registration Act for failing to provide professional services of the quality expected of him, in failing to reposition the patient from a seated position to a supine position before performing CPR.

The Singapore Medical Council (SMC) argued that his failure to do so was a failure to meet the minimum standards of acceptable care by medical practitioners.

A disciplinary tribunal had found Dr Ho guilty of the charge and ordered him to be suspended for nine months.

Dr Ho appealed against the decision.

LAWYER DESCRIBES “PERFECT STORM”

His lawyer, Mr Amos Cai from Yuen Law, said there was room for a fine instead of a suspension. He said the nine months’ suspension imposed by the disciplinary tribunal was “manifestly excessive”.

In Monday’s hearing before the Court of Three Judges, Mr Cai described the situation as “a perfect storm”.

He said the patient suffered cardiac arrest in a general practitioner’s clinic, in a small and narrow treatment room instead of a typical accident & emergency room.

He cited an expert called by SMC who said he had seen 10 cardiac collapses in about 20 years, only two of which were in seated positions.

His client was a locum, and was 33 years old and a doctor of seven years at the time of the incident, said Mr Cai.

He said it was “reasonable” for Dr Ho to do what he did because the space was small, it was “chaotic” and he was not trained in patient transfer.

Justice Steven Chong, who heard the appeal along with Justices Judith Prakash and Tay Yong Kwang, said he accepted that it was a tense situation, but “as a doctor, he would know that for CPR to be effective, you have to have maximum compression”.

For this to be achieved, a person should not be in a seated position, said Justice Chong. Dr Ho did not even attempt to put the patient in a supine position, he said.

According to Mr Cai, Dr Ho had stated in September 2017 that he was “deeply saddened by the demise of the patient” and wanted to apologise unreservedly to the patient’s family.

SMC’s counsel, Mr Chia Voon Jiet, said the case was not a perfect storm as Mr Cai described.

A perfect storm would be if the patient was “up in the mountains” with Dr Ho, with Dr Ho having no experience with cardiac arrest.

“That’s not the case,” said Mr Chia. “In fact, the patient was fairly fortunate to have suffered a cardiac arrest in a clinic with a doctor.”

He said Dr Ho was trained in CPR and had witnessed and attended to numerous collapsed cases, worked in A&E and had clinic assistants present.

Mr Chia said this was “not his first rodeo”.

“What we say Dr Ho failed to do in this case was to do the very basic step in CPR, that requires him to lay the patient in a supine position,” said Mr Chia.

He said there were four people present in the clinic at the time, and academic literature that three people would be “optimal to effect the transfer”.

“We know Dr Ho is saying that neither he nor his assistants were trained (to do patient transfer). It’s really a manner of common sense,” said Mr Chia. “It’s a controlled descent.”

The Court of Three Judges cut the suspension from nine months meted out by the disciplinary tribunal to three months for Dr Ho, saying they would give their full reasons at a later date.

This is not the first sanction Dr Ho has been given. In 2021, he was fined and suspended for downloading pornography at a polyclinic and trying to sell an erectile dysfunction prescription drug to a man who was not his patient.

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