Commenting on the findings of the “The Health of Asia” report produced by the Economic Intelligence Unit and commissioned by Prudential, SMU Dean of Students and Professor of Sociology (Practice) Paulin Straughan, who is also Director for the SMU Centre for Research on Successful Ageing, said that going forward, health screenings – which were classified as non-essential and took a back seat in the past year – should pick up as Singapore re-opens. “It is important for us to address the backlog of health screenings when things start to normalise so we can arrest chronic ailments as they emerge,” she said adding that the incidence of chronic conditions here had dropped significantly last year, possibly due to the reduction in health screenings.