On Tuesday, we saw the independent review committee tasked with investigating the closely-watched Hepatitis C outbreak at the Singapore General Hospital's renal unit release their report for public scrutiny (and in case you missed it, you can read our summary of it here).

Read what our two lead only-functioning opposition parties have said in response to it:

1. The Workers' Party

- Decided to abandon its pursuit of launching a Committee of Inquiry into the matter (whew).

- Suggested things it hopes the newly-formed taskforce (to be headed by this MP-elect, by the way:) will look into:

These include

a) Defining what is "timely" in recognising something is an outbreak, escalating it to the right folks to deal with, and then actually dealing with it;

b) Defining the role of the hospital's governing healthcare group or cluster (in this case, SingHealth) in situations like this, since it wasn't stated in the report;

c) Being clear about how soon the minister should be informed about things like this, since the committee, in saying the period that lapsed between the ministry's director of medical services being informed and Minister Gan being briefed in full was acceptable, may have implicitly set a guideline of how soon this should be happening.

2. Singapore Democratic Party

- Noted that the report seemed to absolve the Ministry of Health of blame over what had happened.

- Asked when the serious information circulating various divisions was communicated to the highest levels of authority in the ministry, calling for the release of emails and communication among those involved.

- Declared that the Health Minister should take responsibility for the communication taking place within his ministry, and also should take responsibility for the seven Hep C-linked deaths that occurred as a result of the outbreak.

- Said that if exceptionalism is a justification for high salaries, ministers should not be excused for lapses like this.

Read our story about the initial report's findings here.

Top images from file.

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