The Official Opening of The NKF CMF-SGH Centre for Hearing and Cochlear Implants and Commemorating SGH's 223rd Cochlear Implantation

31 Aug 2005

By Dr Maliki Osman, Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Health

Venue: Singapore General Hospital, ENT Centre

His Excellency Miles Kupa, Australian High Commissioner

Professor Tan Ser Kiat, Group CEO, SingHealth and CEO, SGH,

Mr Koh Cher Siang, Deputy Chairman of the NKF

Dr Gerard Chuah, Chairman of the NKF's Children Medical Fund

Distinguished guests

Ladies & gentlemen

I am indeed honoured to be part of this special occasion - the official opening of the NKF CMF-SGH Centre for Hearing and Cochlear Implants.

Hearing is something many of us take for granted.  We know someone is at our door when the doorbell rings.  We are aware of danger when we hear the screech of car tires behind us as we cross the road. We feel peace and calm when we hear a loved one's voice or a beautiful piece of music.

But not everyone can hear these things.  Some experience a very different reality, and yet they are no less capable of having a normal life or even an extraordinary one.

The great composer Beethoven had grown completely deaf by the time he wrote his final masterpiece, the Ninth Symphony, which premiered in 1824.  When listening to that piece of music, we can imagine the amount of painstaking effort Beethoven had to put into its creation.

It was documented that Beethoven wrote to his brother of his anger, sadness and his intention to end his life.  Thankfully for us, he learnt to cope with his affliction instead. By cutting off the legs of his piano and placing the instrument on the floor, he "heard" his music through the vibrations in the floor when he played.   In this way, he went on to write some of the world's greatest music pieces. 

Beethoven serves as an example of adult fortitude, holding firm onto the belief that one's gifts can outweigh one's handicaps. Children with hearing impairment need our help and nurturing in this belief. With modern medicine unavailable 200 years ago, children today have an opportunity to experience sounds everyone else is blessed to hear, such as the Ninth Symphony.

It is also not easy caring for or understanding the world that these children live in. It is not easy being their parents. Not only do they have to contend with their children's suffering, they also spend much time and money in taking them to see various specialists who are in various parts of Singapore.

I congratulate the Singapore General Hospital and the NKF Children's Medical Fund for building a dedicated one-stop facility to provide holistic care to hearing-impaired children. This includes not just medical care, but also social and financial needs. This will greatly ease not just the physical demands, but also the psychological burdens that hearing impairment can inflict.

In particular, I commend them for their innovation in setting up a facility where family members, friends, teachers and colleagues are given the opportunity to hear and experience for themselves, sounds actually heard by a hearing-impaired individual. It is only by going through similar experiences that one can fully appreciate the difficulties and problems faced by a hearing-impaired person.

I also applaud the Centre's efforts to train and educate professionals in providing better patient care for the hearing impaired. I hope that this centre will help establish Singapore as an international centre for comprehensive management and treatment of hearing anomalies for children. 

Childhood deafness is one of the commonest major disabilities with up to 6 in 1,000 babies born with hearing loss. It is one disability where medical intervention has made a great difference. In the past, it was impossible for a child born with profound hearing loss to hear enough to develop intelligible speech. Today, cochlear implant technology together with early detection and effective rehabilitation has made it possible for the same child to develop near normal speech and language; and be successfully integrated into mainstream education and society.  SGH pioneered cochlear implant surgery in Singapore for local and overseas patients.  Today, we commemorate SGH's 223rd cochlear implantation.  In Mandarin, "2" (or er) has the similar sound as "ear" and in Cantonese "223" (or yee yee san) is an auspicious number.

Since 2001, cochlear implants for Singaporeans were funded as a trial service under the MOH's Health Service Development Programme.  The 4-year trial ended in March 2005.

Over 50 children were involved in this trial. The results indicated that after implantation, there is potential for up to 90% of them to be successfully integrated into mainstream education.

Two-thirds of these children are either already in mainstream kindergartens, pre-schools and schools, or will be there in the near future. With a little understanding and patience from teachers and classmates in the mainstream environment, they will be able follow lessons, interact with classmates and perform as well as their normal peers.  

Of the 12 adult patients studied, more than 80% achieved significant improvement in speech perception after implantation. Seven patients were unemployed prior to implantation because of their deafness. After receiving their cochlear implants, 5 of them (72%) are now gainfully employed.

As for the future of government funding for cochlear implants, details are now being worked out and more will be announced in the next few months.

All this is worth celebrating and is certainly another milestone in public healthcare. I take it as a heartening sign of what can be done, and recall Beethoven's words: "The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, 'Thus far and no farther'." There are no limits to what we can achieve with talent and hard work. This centre shows what can be done when bright minds collaborate and throw their efforts into building something lasting and beneficial. I hope the young lives it benefits will be similarly encouraged to explore their full potential and realise there are no disabling barriers hindering what they can do.

With this, I would like to wish the NKF CMF-SGH Centre for Hearing and Cochlear Implants, every success.

Thank you.