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26 Nov 2010
By Khaw Boon Wan
Venue: Suntec City International Convention & Exhibition Centre
1. Last week, MM Lee opened the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. At the event, he described the Singapore healthcare services as among the best in Asia. But he warned of the challenges as our population ages and more Singaporeans have to live with chronic diseases.
2. We are indeed among the best in Asia in healthcare services. But we should do better. In the next stage of healthcare development, we must be among the best in disease prevention and keeping our people healthy. This means helping Singaporeans to stay healthy for as long as possible and helping those with chronic diseases to keep the diseases under control, without complications. In short, our mission is to help Singaporeans stay away from hospitals.
Different Strategies
3. Keeping the population healthy and providing them with worldclass healthcare require very different strategies. Providing excellent healthcare means investing in doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics and we have done well in this area. Keeping the populaton healthy, however, requires ground-up mass community participation. It is much more challenging. It requires Singaporeans to take ownership of their own health.
4. It is in this spirit that we launched the National Healthy Lifestyle Campaign 17 years ago. Then PM Goh kicked off the campaign to signify the importance our Government placed on this campaign. It has become an annual campaign.
5. Two weeks ago, SM Goh launched this year’s National Healthy Lifestyle Campaign. It gave him an opportunity to review our progress over the years.
Cup Half Full
6. We have made some progress. For example, 1 in 4 hawkers now use cooking oil with reduced saturated fat. 40% of Singaporeans ask for less gravy, less sauce or less oil in their dishes, when eating out in hawker centres. 80% of Singaporeans now look for the “Healthier Choice Symbol” when shopping in supermarkets. Among products such as sweetened beverages, milk and sauces sold in major supermarkets, 50% of the items carry the “Healthier Choice Symbol”.
7. But the cup is not yet full. Not all Singaporeans have yet fully embraced a healthy lifestyle. While more people are exercising, only 1 in 5 do so regularly. 1 in 2 Singaporeans do not exercise at all. I particularly worry about rising obesity among Singaporeans. Our obesity prevalence has now hit 11%. I worry because obesity is closely linked to diabetes, heart attacks and strokes. Not surprisingly, our diabetes prevalence rate has also gone up, to 11%. The increase is seen across all ages, in both genders and the major ethnic groups.
8. While this is a also a global trend, we must try to buck the trend. We must step up our efforts to reverse, if not at least arrest, this rising obesity trend. Our work with schools, workplaces and food courts to provide healthy and lower-caloric dishes must continue. We will extend these upstream, to childcare centres, targetting parents of pre-schoolers. We will introduce guidelines to protect children from indiscriminate advertising of unhealthy food and drinks. We will henceforth conduct household surveys on obesity more frequently, at two-yearly intervals. We must keep a tight pulse on the trends, so that we can refine our policies promptly.
9. Obesity and economic development are not Siamese twins. The Japanese and the Koreans have remained slim. Their obesity prevalence at 4% is less than half of ours. We must understand better their approach and see if they can be adopted here.
10. But it is not just obesity that is rising. Our smoking rate is creeping up. It is now 14%. Here we have done better than the Japanese and the Koreans, but we must not be complacent. With Korean drama series showng their actresses lighting up, I worry about such unhealthy influences.
Ground Up Movement
11. SM Goh made an observation. He felt that our National Healthy Lifestyle Campaign was still largely top-down. He challenged us to make it a ground-up movement. He noted that the top-down tree planting campaign has evolved over the years into a ground-up Clean & Green Week with many activities in all constituencies throughout the island. He knew that this evolution would take a few years but we should make the change. And we will.
12. The cooperation of employers and organizations are integral to building the ground-up movement SM Goh envisaged. The workplace is an important setting and a logical place to promote disease prevention. Employers, employees and the Government are on the same side of the battle field, against a common enemy of ill health. A sick employee is an unproductive worker. An unwell employee is an unhappy person. An unfit employee is less employable. An old and unwell employee will find it so much more difficult to get or hold on to a job.
13. That is why we work hard with employers and unions to encourage health screening, chronic disease management, smoking cessation, and monitor follow-ups. Our experience has always been that a committed CEO makes a huge difference to the company’s culture on health promotion. The Singapore HEALTH Awards was introduced 10 years ago to commend the health promoting champions. Among us today, there are 59 companies who received the Award in 1999. They do not become complacent; they persevere and strive for greater heights. They are all Platinum and Gold Award winners today.
14. More employers are joining the cause. The number of award winners has tripled to 389. Amongst them, 40% are Gold and Platinum Award winners. They are excellent role models for other employers.
Tripartite Way To Health
15. Last year, I convened the second National Tripartite Committee on Workplace Health, to review current workplace health promotion efforts and to propose new strategies. They have concluded their work.
16. They have released their recommendations to the media earlier. Let me highlight their key recommendations. First, the Ministry of Manpower and HPB should integrate workplace health promotion with the workplace safety and health framework.
17. Second, make a special effort to customise and target health promotion at SMEs where most employees work.
18. Third, identify industry-specific structural and operational barriers against workplace health promotion and design solutions to overcome them.
19. Fourth, implement a pilot project to get at-risk employees to comply with follow-up management after their health screening.
20. You can read the details in the newspapers tomorrow.
21. I thank the Tripartite Committee for their good work. HPB has started customised Workplace Health Promotion Grants for SMEs, and other SME-specific programmes. But full implementation of the recommendations will require collaborations among the government, employers and unions. MOH and MOM will co-chair an implementation committee to provide oversight and guidance.
Friends and Colleagues
22. Staying healthy is a natural desire. Unfortunately, modern lifestyle has blunted or even distorted the human instinct to do so. My Ministry will do its best to help Singaporeans regain our instinct to stay fit and well. We cannot do it alone. We need all Singaporeans to take ownership and act on it.