SPEECH BY MR TAN KIAT HOW, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION & MINISTRY OF HEALTH, AT THE KWONG WAI SHIU HOSPITAL COMMUNITY CARE DAY, 11 APRIL 2026

Mr Tang Kin Fei, Chairman, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital,

Mr William Leong, Vice Chairman, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital,

Dr Mok Ying Jang, CEO, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital,

The leadership team and staff at Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital,

My parliamentary colleagues Mr Shawn Loh and Mr Alex Yeo, as well as all of you.

1.       Good morning. It is lovely to join all of you this morning at Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital’s Community Care Day. For more than a hundred years, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital has been serving Singaporeans and the community. It provides a comprehensive range of services – Active Ageing Centres (AACs), senior care centres, nursing homes, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) centres and home care services.

2.       But more importantly, Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital provides these services not just by themselves, but in collaboration and partnership with many partners – healthcare providers, community care organisations, volunteers, caregivers, family members, and seniors themselves. Today’s Community Care Day, which is an annual event, celebrates this shared purpose and partnerships built over the years.

3.       Today, Singapore is super-aged, and you can see it around us: in our estates, neighbourhoods, coffee shops and hawker centres. We have many seniors together with us, and we want to take care of them. There’s a Chinese saying: “家有一老，如有一宝”. 所以我们的社区有很多老宝贝们. There are a lot of seniors and treasures who are precious to us in our community. We want our seniors to age well in the community, with care and services provided to them seamlessly. Meaningful community and social engagement are crucial for them to maintain their health and slow down the decline in their later years. And this is important. Care is not just provided for in healthcare institutions.

4.       More importantly, we want them to age well and be cared for in an environment they are familiar with – their homes, estates, where their friends are, and as Chairman earlier pointed out, where social connections are. This is important, and to enable such a vision, partnerships are all the more crucial. Partnerships between healthcare institutions, Community Care Organisations, and with other partners in the community, so seniors can age well in their neighbourhood. That is why we are anchoring care in the community.

5.       This is one of the major priorities of the health ministry in the coming years. You heard Minister Ong Ye Kung speak about it in Parliament, about more preventive health. We have Healthier SG, so all of us – myself included – have to see a doctor and have a Health Plan. But it is not just Healthier SG. We have launched a national initiative, Age Well SG, where we anchor care in the community.

Anchoring Care in the Community

6.       In this respect, we have many partners. One of the important partners is the AACs. They bring community partners together in initiatives and programmes to serve our seniors.

7.       We saw an example of this last year. Kwong Wai Shiu collaborated with the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) on a functional screening programme at two AACs. Over five days, 290 seniors were screened for signs of functional decline and received health advice. Seniors that needed follow-ups were referred to relevant healthcare providers. Such initiatives show that AACs can anchor care in the community.

8.       Another important initiative is the Community Health Posts, or CHPs, located within our AACs. They bring healthcare services closer to our seniors. NHG Health operates the CHPs in each of our four Kwong Wai Shiu AACs. With this arrangement, seniors can conveniently seek consultations on issues like medication-related concerns and chronic disease management. 

Volunteerism

9.       Kwong Wai Shiu’s initiatives would not be possible without the support and dedication of community volunteers. For example, Kwong Wai Shiu runs a programme called “Kopitiam Diaries” where senior volunteers bring local delights like kopi, tea, and kuehs to nursing home residents. This recreates the kopitiam environment that the residents are familiar with, which in turn, encourages conversation and bonding. Kopitiam Diaries demonstrates how volunteering can be a way for seniors themselves to stay meaningfully engaged, through supporting other seniors. And that is important – it is not just about providing care for other seniors. This provides our seniors themselves with a sense of agency. They can do things, they are independent, they can care for others as well, and they have a sense of purpose in their lives. So Kopitiam Diaries brings together seniors caring for seniors.

10.      Other community partnerships with youth and corporate partners also demonstrate how the community can work together to enrich seniors’ lives. For example, during Chinese New Year, students from Nan Hua High School brought festive celebrations directly to the seniors in Kwong Wai Shiu Nursing Home, complete with hampers and handsomely made Chinese lanterns. I am confident that the smiles our students brought to our seniors’ faces were not just because of the hampers and lanterns, but because our students were there to care for them and show them that the seniors are not left alone, and that there are those in the community, especially our younger ones, who are still caring for them.

11.      This matters a lot to many of our seniors when I speak to them: a sense of care, and the sense that every generation looks after the generation before them. “饮水思源，不忘初心”. That means a lot to many of our seniors, and to a lot of us as an Asian society. When we grow old, we want the next generation to also care for us. When our children grow old, we want their children to care for them. These are the values that I think bring our society together, and they matter a lot. Occasions where our students and young people visit our seniors, they understand that they have a responsibility to care for others in the community – those who are more vulnerable, less supported, and especially our “宝贝们” in the community. It is not just youth volunteers – our corporate partners also play important roles. They contribute by supporting monthly outings with nursing home residents, offering their time, energy, and companionship.

12.      I would like to thank everyone who has supported our seniors. Your effort makes a difference to them and their caregivers and, importantly, assures them that they are not walking this ageing journey on their own. Please give yourselves and all our volunteers a round of applause. You have made a difference, and continue to make a difference.

13.      I would like to commend Kwong Wai Shiu for your steadfast dedication in serving the needs of our seniors. Your efforts ensure that seniors can live well, stay socially connected, and age with dignity in the community. I look forward to Kwong Wai Shiu’s continued support in providing affordable and quality ageing and senior care services to the community. 

14.      An exciting lineup of activities has been brought to you by our community partners, and a lot of sedap makan, yummy food. To our seniors, I encourage you to take advantage of all the activities, especially our free health screenings, health information booths, and interactive games to equip yourselves with knowledge on active, healthy ageing and form meaningful connections with the community. I wish everyone a wonderful Community Care Day and a lovely weekend ahead. Thank you very much.