Singapore is leading the world in progress made on a set of health- related United Nations goals, according to a new global study.

It was ranked highest among 188 countries, scoring 87 on an index designed to show progress towards these development targets.

The score puts the Republic ahead of other developed countries, including the Scandinavian states, Switzerland and Britain.

The research is part of the Global Burden of Disease study, coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent research centre based in America.

For the Sustainable Development Goals index, researchers looked at countries' achievements in 37 health-related areas, between 1990 and last year.

These included infectious disease rates, the probability of death among children and infants, and the prevalence of smoking and alcohol consumption.

They then ran projections on how these countries would perform by 2030 and assigned each a score. The results were published yesterday in The Lancet, a prestigious international journal.

Singapore did particularly well when it came to areas such as vaccination, sanitation and certain infectious diseases.

For example, it received a perfect score of 100 for malaria incidence rates and 95 for vaccine coverage.

However, it fell short on progress made on certain issues. These included suicide death rates, child sex abuse and the mean levels of PM2.5 pollutants in the air.

Local experts said they were not surprised by Singapore's good performance for most indicators.

However, they added that the weak points highlighted areas that people should pay more attention to.

For example, suicide was a complicated issue that required more than just training people to spot and reach out to those at risk, said Ms Christine Wong, who is executive director of suicide-prevention group Samaritans of Singapore.

"It will also require society opening up to the idea that this is something we need to start putting a focus on," she said.

Mr Alfred Tan, chief executive of the Singapore Children's Society, said he disagreed with the assessment that no progress had been made on preventing child sex abuse here.

However, he added that there was still room for improvement - especially taking into account the growing danger that children might encounter sexual predators online.

"Children as young as pre-schoolers should be exposed to preventive measures to educate them about these issues," he said.