The National University of Singapore (NUS) Centre for Biomedical Ethics (CBmE) at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine was Asia’s first World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Bioethics. CBmE joined WHO’s Global Network of Collaborating Centres for Bioethics in 2014, has continued to support the WHO in implementing its health ethics mandate since then. As a Collaborating Centre, CBmE provides technical support for WHO’s work in the areas of:

• Healthcare and Biotechnological Innovation (e.g AI, genome editing and neurotechnology)
• Communicable Disease Outbreaks, Epidemics, and Pandemics
• Research Ethics and Governance
• Climate Change and Health

Apart from WHO Headquarters in Geneva, CBmE has supported the work of WHO regional offices in the Western Pacific Region, the Southeast Asian Region and the Eastern Mediterranean Region. It has also collaborated with other international organizations including the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, the World Bank, UNAIDS, and UNICEF on WHO-related projects.

WHO reports and publications that CBmE contributed to (selected):

• • Responding to the Global Mpox outbreak: Ethics Issues and Considerations: a Policy Brief (2023)
  • COVID-19 and Mandatory Vaccination: Ethical Considerations (2022)
  • WHO Guidance on the Ethical Conduct of Controlled Human Infection Studies (2022)
  • Digital Documentation of COVID-19 Certificates (2021)
  • Ethical Framework for WHO’s Work in the ACT-Accelerator (2021)
  • Human Genome Editing: A Framework for Governance (2021)
  • Ethical Standards for Research During Public Health Emergencies: Distilling Existing Guidance to Support COVID-19 R&D (2020)
  • Big data and Artificial Intelligence for Achieving Universal Health Coverage: An International Consultation on Ethics (2018)
  • WHO Guidelines on Ethical Issues in Public Health Surveillance (2017)
  • Guidance for Managing Ethical Issues in Infectious Disease Outbreaks (2016)
  • Justification of the Use of CT in Asymptomatic People for Individual Health Assessment (IHA) (2016)
  • Global Health Ethics: Key Issues (2015)  
  • Ethics in Epidemics, Emergencies and Disasters: Research, Surveillance and Patient Care (training manual) (2015)