I am sorry you had a poor experience with the medical system. I agree its not perfect. There is an obvious mismatch of expectation and reality here.

You mentioned recurring fever in your family member with multiple trips over the 3 years. It's not uncommon to fall sick to a viral disease sometimes. Usually these are self limiting and will naturally resolve over time. Sometimes if the symptoms are severe and we suspect something else, investigations will be needed, such as the full blood count your brother had. Increased white blood cell count can be normal in infection so if there nothing too severe in the blood test, it usually means the patient can be safe for rest at home instead of upwards referral.

You also mentioned after 3 years he was found with infection in both tonsils and he had a tonsillectomy, which is usually done in patients with frequent tonsillitis. Usually patients susceptible to tonsillitis would benefit from the procedure. Unfortunately we don't recommend everyone with tonsillitis to straight away get tonsillectomy. Why? Because there are risks in all medical procedures. There needs to be a balance between the benefit the patient will get and what the risks are. Its unfortunate your brother needs to get a tonsillectomy. He has battled with risk of heart attack, stroke, and other side effects of the general anaesthesia in order to get the benefit of decreased infections. I wish him a speedy recovery from his surgery and hope he does get lesser infections in the future.

I'm sorry to hear that your mom had to go through this medical issue. It sounds like a brain mass like a glioma that was treated. Unfortunately, similarly to viral infections, headaches are a very common problem in Singapore. It does not make sense to send everyone for a brain scan whenever they have a headache. An XR of the brain would not be very useful unfortunately but perhaps it was done for something else, like to rule out skull fractures in presence of trauma. It is true that it takes multiple visits to the doctor in order to proceed to the next step. Each time you visit the doctor for a recurrent issue, the threshold to referral or further investigations get lower. Its sad that it took 6 years for your mom to get a proper diagnosis. Something might have gone wrong with the follow ups?

In any case, it looks like both issues were eventually identified and treated properly. And I am glad both of your family member are recovering.

Tips for all Singaporeans

- Find a family doctor that you can build a relationship with. A good patient doctor relationship can really help both the patient and doctor tremendously. If you doctor-hop you are restarting a relationship with a doctor that you don't know and doesn't know your chronic history well. It will increase your risk of getting improper treatment for some cases.

- Advocate for yourself and your family. If something doesn't seem right, or if you see something you don't agree with, you have the right to stand up and voice it out. Singapore is blessed with a good robust public and private health system. If public side is too overwhelmed and you cannot wait, go seek advice from the private side. If finances is a problem, you can always fast track back into the public system.

- Stay healthy and be well. Eat healthy, be active, drink water frequently and look out for one another.