In his National Day Rally speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put special emphasis on diabetes, a silent killer which has become more prevalent nowadays (Soft drinks to pack less sugar to cut diabetes risk; Aug 21).

He gave several proposals, such as cutting down on sugar and having a healthy lifestyle.

However, I was struck by how he was humble enough to say that it was unclear how effective these measures are. He also promised that the Government would study solutions that anybody comes up with and implement them if they are viable.

This is a new era where the Government's job is not to tell us what is best for us. Rather, its job is to evaluate proposals from anyone and to implement them accordingly.

In this vein, I suggest that The Straits Times set up a weekly or biweekly column on tackling diabetes.

Readers can share their strategies for living and eating healthily in this column, and an expert panel of family physicians, endocrinologists and dietitians could evaluate the feasibility of each suggestion.

The Government can pick up good practices from this column and help propagate them to the public.

In this era, crowdsourcing and the sharing of personal experiences are the new strategies in solving our national problems.

Desmond Wai (Dr)