Speech by Coordinating Minister for Public Services and Minister for Defence Chan Chun Sing at St Luke’s Hospital’s 30th Anniversary Gala Dinner on 25 September 2026 at Shangri-La Singapore

Good evening, everyone. Congratulations to all for your 30th anniversary, 30 years of service.

Tonight, the real Guests-of-Honour are all of you – the donors, the staff and the people who have contributed quietly behind-the-scenes. So, tonight I want to honour all of you. My parliamentary colleagues and I are here to honour you rather than for you to honour us. So, congratulations and thank you to all the Guests-of-Honour for your years of contributions and service, and a special shout out to the long-serving staff from St Luke's as well.

I must congratulate you for your prescient foresight. You have chosen to talk about ageing on the day the population in brief was published, which double or triple confirms that Singapore has become a super-aged society. So, well done to the organisers for such great foresight.

Now, jokes aside, this presents us both challenges and opportunities. Tonight, I would like to use the word ‘IMPACT’ to talk about the impact that we need to make, and how we need to prepare ourselves. Yes, we are going to have a super-aged society, or we are already a super-aged society. The question is, ‘what does it mean for us?’, and ‘what do we have to do?’ I have always said that circumstances do not define us. Our responses to circumstances define us.

There are three things, or three-plus-one thing, that we need to do from now and going forward. The first is the easy part. We need to get our infrastructure ready. We need to get our infrastructure ready, not just in the acute hospital, the step-down care, the palliative care, but also in the community. Our basic philosophy is that we do not want people to age just in homes or in isolated communities. We want fellow Singaporeans who have contributed so much to the country to be able to age-in-place. That will require us to think through our new models of community living from how we design our roads, our footpaths, our public transport system, our hospitals, our community care facilities, and so forth. So, that is relatively easy and St. Luke's Hospital’s new plans are also part of this broader picture of how different parts of the infrastructure are coming together.

The second part, which is a bit more challenging, are the models of care. What can be our new models of care for a growing number of elderly with very different and diverse needs? The previous models that we are familiar with – home care on one spectrum, institutional care on the other spectrum – are just two anchor points. We believe that somewhere between these two bookends or anchor points, there can be many different new and innovative models of care. This is where we would like to thank St Luke’s and many other partners for working with the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social and Family Development to really see how we can combine our social and medical side together so that it is an integrated system. If anybody can do this in any city, Singapore must be the pioneer in this because we have the resources, we have the people with the commitment, and we have the ideas. So, I want to thank all of you for contributing to this journey where we continue to explore new models of care for our growing number of elderly and their diverse needs.

The third thing that is most difficult and most important is the ‘P’, the people. At the end of the day, we can have the best infrastructure and the best models of care, but if we do not have the right people with the right skills, and most importantly, the right values of care, we will never get to where we want to be. This is why, over the years, St Luke's and other institutions have worked so hard behind-the-scenes to develop a core of people that can form the core of the care community that we want to see in Singapore.

When I say the people, I do not just mean the staff in the hospitals, in our community care facilities. I am referring to all of us in Singapore because when we have to manage the challenges that come with an aged population, all of us can do something and all of us must do something. Even those people who are going to be cared for at home or in community facilities, all of us at home, all of us in the community, can do something as part of this wider circle of care that we would like to see develop in Singapore.

These are the three things I think we need to get ourselves ready. The infrastructure, the new models of care, and the people. The people with the right skill sets and the right values.

Then you might ask me, what is my acronym about ‘IMPACT’ after these three things? Well, the last thing is we need to act. That is why I-M-P-A-C-T, impact. All of us need to act. All of us may not be experts in medical care or social care, but all of us can contribute something. All of us can contribute ideas, and more importantly, actions. Actions at the family level, actions at the community level, actions at the institutional level, or even actions at the national level where we formulate policies. For us to overcome and thrive in the face of these challenges, we must all pull our weight together, and all of us must act together. For us to achieve real impact, we need not only infrastructure, models, people, but also actions.

Finally, I need to make a pitch for everyone. First, I want to thank all of you for your contributions to St Luke's Hospital all these past 30 years. But, as [St Luke’s Hospital’s] Chairman and CEO have mentioned, 30 years is but the beginning. We have a long way to go. We have new horizons, new challenges, but we also have new action plans. For those of us who are so blessed, let us all remember that it is always more blessed to be able to give than to receive. Or as the Chinese say, 施比受更有福.

On that note, I wish you all the very best and hope that you will continue to strongly support St Luke's Hospital's effort, not just tonight, but every day in our ongoing journey to develop a society that we can all be proud of as our seniors continue to age with grace and confidence.

Thank you very much.