Dissecting malaria in Singapore : 1950 to 1999

• Main Author: Teh, Joo Teng
• Other Authors: Park Hyung Wook
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/69741
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Singapore is often imagined as an affluent city where modern healthcare and urban sanitation have all but eradicated malaria. Occasionally, the victory over malaria is even held up as a technocratic triumph. But the same success has not been achieved on the dengue front, which leads one to question the malaria success. This paper suggests that in the first place, malaria had not been as non-existent in Singapore as commonly thought. Through historical sources and interviews, this paper finds that malaria is a disease that cannot be completely prevented by technocratic solutions, as there is a wider socio-economic context at play. In the same way, the wider socio-economic context may have affected the success in the dengue fight. This paper encourages a more holistic approach to addressing mosquito-borne diseases, one that avoids thinking about diseases only as biological occurrences requiring only medical or scientific solutions.