A Cancer vaccine that transformed Singapore and the world
Ga briel Oon & Karen Kwek

Hepatitis B is one of the world’s most infectious killer diseases – even more contagious than HIV. Today the hep B virus afflicts more than 360 million people worldwide. Between 1983 and 1985, select groups of Singaporeans took part in clinical trials – undertaken by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) – of a revolutionary vaccine against hepatitis B.

In Singapore, 1 October 2010 marks the 25th anniversary of the implementation of the National Hepatitis B Vaccination Programme, aimed at eradicating the infectious liver disease from all newborns in the country. The success of this programme led, ten years later, to a gathering of world experts in Singapore to endorse the hepatitis B vaccine as a safe and effective preventive of a disease now recognised as one of the major causes of primary
liver cancer in the world.

This book tells the full story of Singapore’s groundbreaking hep B vaccination programme
– including the medical research, entrepreneurial spirit and political foresight that drove it
– and commemorates the work of a handful of pioneers who had the audacity to challenge the conventions of their time and, in so doing, transform national and world history.