Speech by Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State for Health, at the Tsao Foundation Experts Series 2017 – Dr Alex Kalache, “Smart, Inclusive Cities” , 15 November 2017

Dr Mary Ann Tsao,

Chairman of Tsao Foundation,     

Dr Alex Kalache,

Co-President,

International Longevity Centre Global Alliance,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good afternoon.

1.         I am delighted to join all of you at the Tsao Foundation’s Experts Series with Dr Alex Kalache and Dr Mary Ann Tsao.

Cities of Longer Lives

2.         The world is seeing a phenomenal demographic shift. Between 2015 and 2050, the proportion of the world’s population over 60 years old will almost double, from 12% to 22%. This is partly because we are living longer lives.  Global average life expectancy increased by 5 years between 2000 and 2015.^[1]  Singapore is no exception to these trends. By 2030, 1 in 4 Singaporeans will be over 65 years old.  This has been bolstered by our rising life expectancy, which grew from 80 to 83 years in the last decade.

Inclusive Cities

3.         With a significant proportion of our population being seniors, it is important to ensure that our cities are inclusive and can enable seniors to age well as fully participating members of society.  This inclusivity needs to span a few core areas. First, our seniors should have equal opportunities, be it in learning, development, or employment.  Second, our seniors should be embraced as a valuable part of the community, and not isolated.  Third, our seniors should be enabled to live autonomously, through deliberate and purposeful city and urban design.  With these key factors in place, our seniors will be empowered to live healthy, active and meaningful lives in our society.

Singapore as a City for All Ages

4.         Singapore seeks to build an inclusive society for seniors at both the national and community levels.  At the National Level, the Ministerial Committee on Ageing launched the Action Plan for Successful Ageing in 2015. Covering more than 70 initiatives across 12 key areas, the Action Plan is our national blueprint to create an inclusive society. The Action Plan seeks to create equal opportunities for our seniors. For example, to encourage and facilitate lifelong learning among our seniors, a National Silver Academy was launched last year. We are expanding learning opportunities and have provided more than 21,000 learning places across 900 courses this year, up from 10,000 across 500 courses last year. On the employment front, we raised the Re-Employment age to 67 earlier this year, to enable older workers to continue working if they wish to do so and are able to do so. 

5.         The Action Plan encourages our seniors to be embraced as a vital part of our community. For instance, under our Community Befriending Programme, we have over 700 senior befrienders serving more than 2,000 seniors in over 40 constituencies. Our eldercare facilities like the Active Ageing Hubs, which we will build in 10 new Housing estates, provides not just care, but also active ageing opportunities, so that seniors can continue to participate and contribute to the community. I was present at the opening of the first Active Ageing Hub – the Kwong Wai Shiu Community Care Centre @McNair – last weekend and just three months into its operations, it is already a vibrant community of over 500 members, which includes a number of senior volunteers. To promote inter-generational harmony, we will also be co-locating eldercare facilities and childcare facilities in some 10 HDB estates over the next 10 years.

6.         The Action Plan aims to enable autonomous living by seniors.  We are systematically refreshing our housing estates, parks and transport systems to make our city senior-friendly.  For example, our National Parks Board is building “therapeutic gardens” that seniors can visit to stay active.

7.         Since 2011, as part of MOH’s City for All Ages initiative, we started various ground up efforts to develop senior-friendly communities.  Town audits and needs survey were first conducted to better understand local community needs.  This led to the development of a simple town audit guide to aid many more communities to conduct similar audits to make their built environment more age-friendly.  In Marine Parade, the Community Kitchen called Goodlife! Makan was developed to create a social hub for vulnerable seniors, including those living alone. Recently, I launched the REACH Community Café in my constituency at Hong Kah North, a place where young and old can come together to bond, enjoy a meal, volunteer or learn together.  These are just a few examples of the ongoing efforts made to build communities for all ages. 

8.         Last year, we started the Community Networks for Seniors (CNS) initiative, which aims to develop a strong system of community based support to complement family support,  and to keep seniors well and help them  age well in place.  Under this initiative, we are bringing preventive health and befriending programmes to all seniors who are in need, regardless of income.  In partnership with the Pioneer Generation Office (PGO) and People’s Association (PA), we plan to expand CNS to many more communities next year.  This year, we have CNS in 3 GRCs – Tampines, Chua Chu Kang and Marine Parade and 2 SMCs - MacPherson and Hong Kah North.

Technology as an Enabler

9.         We are also leveraging on technology as an enabler to make Singapore a City For All Ages. I earlier spoke about the National Silver Academy (NSA).  We are looking to introduce e-learning under the NSA, to make learning even more accessible to seniors at their own time and convenience. Coincidentally, I heard that ComSA Whampoa Centre has also just started a ‘Smart Fridays’ clinic under its ComSA Kawan programme to help seniors get familiar with their mobile devices and digital culture, combining lifelong learning with technology.

10.      Aside from creating opportunities, technology can help to address social and care needs.  For example, the Eastern Health Alliance (EHA) is piloting a home care and safety service, known as Care Line. It is a 24/7 telecare service which provides response to distress or needs and proactive calls such as medication reminders, simple advice to help seniors manage their own health conditions or status check-in or “social” calls. I visited Care Line earlier this year, and was happy to hear from some of Care Line’s clients who appreciate the service.  There are more than 400 clients on the service to date and we will be expanding the service to cover more areas in Singapore.  Another example would be our nationwide pilot of tele-rehabilitation to help support seniors in their post-discharge rehabilitation needs and at the same time, provide convenience for their caregivers. This can help to reduce the number of times that caregivers have to bring the seniors to medical appointments. 

11.       To further unlock the potential of technology and research, the Government has set aside up to $200 million in research funds under the National Innovation Challenge on Active and Confident Ageing to catalyse research related to ageing. This is aimed at encouraging the research community to innovate to transform the experience of ageing. We have launched 6 grant calls to-date, and look forward to these projects contributing towards an inclusive city in Singapore.

CONCLUSION

12.       Working together at the national and community level, we can empower our seniors to have equal opportunities, be embraced, and enabled to live autonomous lives. Today’s keynote speaker, Dr Alex Kalache, is a global expert on the subject of developing age-friendly cities. I look forward to hearing his observations and hope everyone will be inspired by the presentations to do their part to make Singapore a city for all ages. 

13.       I wish all of you an enjoyable afternoon. Thank you.

^[1] WHO stats, taken from http://www.who.int/gho/mortality_burden_disease/life_tables/situation_trends_text/en/