During her presentation at the Growth Asia Summit 2026, Dr Sheryl Tan, senior R&D director and head of medical (APAC and India) at Haleon, highlighted three key healthcare issues happening in Asia today.
The first is low condition awareness, whereby consumers may be taking supplements but do not really understand why.
“For example, 70% of Chinese adults face gum issues, but only 15% get treated. The key challenge is in driving condition awareness, particularly at a very early stage so that it’s more preventative rather than therapeutic,” she said.
Another issue is access to doctors — there are only about 0.6 to 2.8 doctors per 1,000 population across Asia. This means that consumers need to be self-reliant in looking after their own well-being.
Today, the aging society is not only prevalent in Japan but also in many countries in the region, including Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore.
One in four people in Asia is expected to be 60 years old by 2050, underscoring the growth potential of the healthy aging market.
“Going forward, we need to start moving away from lifespan and focus on healthspan. Based on our consumer research, many people do not care when they die. They care about how many years they get to spend in good health and with their family. As such, the concept of healthspan is what we as a community need to anchor on,” she said.
The window of opportunity
Haleon has identified five focus areas for its consumer health business — specifically metabolic risks, mobility disorders, sleep and stress, cognitive and eye health, and oral health.
In Asia, more and more young people are getting diagnosed with metabolic conditions. For instance, one in four South Asian men suffers their first heart attack by 40, while 314 million Asians are living with diabetes, with China and India having the highest prevalence.
“These people will need to be on lifelong therapeutic treatments, which is not ideal. Our take is that they should first start with wellness interventions before eventually ending up with a drug treatment,” Dr Tan explained.
Stress and sleep challenges are common in the modern world, as is the case with cognitive and eye health.
“Everyone has a device these days, and we spend long hours looking at our digital gadgets, so [paying greater attention to] eye health is very important.”
When Dr Tan started as a researcher 10 years ago, there was a widespread misconception that cognitive decline only begins in the 60s.
“Cognitive decline can occur as early as 40, and if you do not have a ‘good base’ — genetics, family history, poor nutrition — that trajectory goes down even faster. This is why cognitive health is something that Haleon is very interested in,” she said.
Lastly, oral health is a neglected topic among the aging demographic, and the company has been driving education in this aspect through its oral health brands, including Sensodyne and Polident.
