SPEECH BY MR ONG YE KUNG, MINISTER FOR HEALTH, AT KWONG WAI SHIU HOSPITAL’S 112TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION AND OFFICIAL OPENING OF KWONG WAI SHIU @ POTONG PASIR

广惠肇医院主席李国基先生

各位嘉宾、同事、朋友们

司徒宇斌基层顾问

大家早上好。今天非常高兴能来到广惠肇医院112周年。你们1910年就开始了，这是在第一次世界大战之前，所以历史悠久。多年来，热心公益，任重道远。今天祝你们生日快乐。李国基主席用华文演讲。今天，就让我用英文演讲。因为在座有多元种族的嘉宾。

Mr Sitoh Yih Pin

Adviser to Potong Pasir SMC GROs

Mr Patrick Lee

Chairman, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital

Board Members

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

1.             I am very happy to join you today for Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital’s 112th celebration and the official opening of Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital @ Potong Pasir.

2.             But I need to say a few thank you’s first. The first thank you is to KWSH for your very significant contributions to our nation’s healthcare sector for 112 years. Through the decades, you have moved with the times, evolving and adapting your services as the needs of our population change, which explains your longevity and your history.

3.             The past two and half years have been especially difficult. Over the last two and a half years, you went through many rules and necessary interventions to keep your premises safe. But throughout this period, all staff of KWSH have demonstrated professionalism and dedication in safeguarding the health and well-being of all your stakeholders and especially of your residents. I thank you too, for soldiering with us as one healthcare system to overcome the pandemic. Thank you very much for that too.

4.             I also want to express my appreciation to the grassroots organisation of Potong Pasir, led by Mr Sitoh Yih Pin. There is a very nice TCM clinic here. Mr Sitoh Yi Pin said the charges here are extremely reasonable. So I am sure that you continue to be a very integral part of this community. The grassroots adviser in a place like Potong Pasir is like a village chief who tries to take care of everything as best as he can.

5.             Not to forget, to the Ministry of Health (MOH) too, it is very important that we have KWSH as a partner which works very closely with Tan Tock Seng Hospital. We have three healthcare clusters and each one has a different characteristic and specific strength. For Tan Tock Seng Hospital, it is especially strong in serving the community and working with community partners. I am glad that we have a partner in you. Thank you very much for your partnership with Ministry of Health.

6.             Let me move to talk about KWSH. This year, you have achieved another milestone with the official opening of this nursing home, which is your second nursing home. You have a total of 438 beds which will be progressively opened. We are all short on manpower but opening the first 100-plus beds has been very important. It adds a lot more resilience in the pandemic because with extra beds, we can transfer patients from hospitals to the nursing home, freeing up the wards so that we can ride through the pandemic. This new nursing home will continue to advance the mission of KWSH to provide quality healthcare to our seniors.

KWSH @ Potong Pasir

7.             I want to also talk about another facility here, which is your Active Ageing Centre (AAC). I want to express my appreciation that we have strengthened our partnership, so the AAC has received the Transition Grant from MOH to enhance the capabilities, and expand the range of services you deliver for the seniors that you serve.

8.             This Centre has been providing maintenance day care, dementia day care, community rehabilitation and nursing services since April this year. It is expected to reach at least 350 seniors residing in Potong Pasir within the first year of its operations and target to reach at least 1,000 seniors.

9.             With the Transition Grant, it will now do more. It will conduct general outreach and active ageing programmes for seniors. For example, it can conduct weekly visits to seniors who live alone here, and to ensure that their needs are well met.

10.          You will also expand meaningful programmes to keep seniors engaged socially and emotionally. For example, your collaboration with the students from St Andrew’s Secondary School is very precious. When you have a school next to a nursing home, and you bring them together as one community – old folks, young people, interact together. Even when you are old, you feel a bit young. For the students, it is very good values-in-action. Sometimes the lessons they learn are much more important than what they learn through examinations and studying in the classrooms.

11.      Another important role for the Active Ageing Centre is to involve more volunteers. I am glad that you have a big team of volunteers. Let us try to work with Adviser Sitoh, and bring in more volunteers, so that we can really make this a very vibrant hub to take care of our seniors and more vulnerable members of our society.

Action Plan for Successful Ageing

12.      Now, let me talk about something a bit broader, which Mr Patrick Lee mentioned. Today is the International Day of Older Persons. It is a day for all of us because we are always older than somebody else. All of us keep progressing in age. The body gets weaker and we may lament how come it is not like the past. But as we get older, we also realise we gain in other things, like knowledge, experience and wisdom. We can gain a lot more friends. So ageing is just something we all have to go through. Accept the age but make the best out of it. From what Mr Patrick Lee said just now, when you preserve a building, you do not just preserve the bricks and mortar. You preserve the spirit (灵魂), so likewise for a person, as we get older, we take care of our health and body. But we must preserve the spirit of a person. The energy and dynamism are still inside every person, including old people.

13.      我们保留旧的建筑，但是不只是保留这个建筑，我们保留它的灵魂。人也是一样，要照顾好一个人的身体。不管几岁也要照顾好我们的身体。但是最重要的是保留它内心的灵魂，老人也有，年轻人也有。这是最重要的。So to do that, we need to look at ageing differently. Nursing homes are needed but we need to find ways as our society get older, preserves everyone’s spirit.

14.      We have been working on this in MOH. We have a committee called the Ministerial Committee on Ageing (MCA) where many different agencies come together and we had a round of Action agenda that was released a few years ago. But we are now refreshing the agenda. The Committee, having brought everyone together, has strengthened the agenda to make it more robust. Essentially it is a series of actions, programmes and initiatives on the ground, involving different agencies and also our community partners.

15.      The focus is on community interventions. When we launched the Action Plan for Successful Ageing in 2015, there were 70 initiatives across various domains. They involved senior volunteerism, lifelong learning, infrastructure, health and wellness. It also included the launch of the Merdeka and Pioneer Generation packages.

16.      We have concluded our recommendations and are finalising the report, and we intend to launch the new Action Plan early next year.

17.      In gist, the refreshed Action Plan will centre around three areas. One is ‘Care’ – making sure that seniors are well taken care of; second is ‘Contribution’ – to ensure that they continue to learn, continue to contribute to people around them, the community and the society; and lastly, ‘Connectedness’ which is essential – to make sure that they continue to interact with people and continue to have a social circle.

Closing

18.      In closing, I would like to congratulate KWSH on the opening of this facility and for 112 years of serving the community. I am confident that KWSH will continue to uphold your ethos of providing affordable and quality healthcare to the sick and needy. I look forward to the continued strong partnership with KWSH.

Thank you very much.