Include funeral parlours at Woodlands Health Campus

I welcome the announcement that Ren Ci Hospital will operate a new nursing home at an upcoming health campus in Woodlands (Ren Ci's third nursing home to be at Woodlands Health Campus, Sept 29).

This move will build upon a new model of care that will see on-site acute and community hospitals, specialist outpatient clinics and long-term care facilities like a hospice integrated into a comprehensive ecology of care. 카지노사이트

The Woodlands Health Campus serves as a hub that fosters health promotion, engages patients with the larger resident communities and seamlessly connects them to community care providers in the northern part of Singapore. For a rapidly ageing population like Singapore, this is a much-needed development.

The Silver Generation Office under the Agency for Integrated Care should also consider situating one of its satellite offices at this health campus to ensure a more robust integration of health and social support services.

We should also include space for the provision of funeral parlours.

This will not only take funeral parlours away from industrial estates, but also integrate death care services as part of our present care and support networks and initiatives.

This can be done as part of a pilot scheme in collaboration with funeral parlour operators and, if successful, could extend to major public hospitals in Singapore.

Funeral homes in South Korea are located within the premises of hospital establishments, providing efficient services and a practical one-stop avenue to meet the needs of the grieving.

In land-scarce Singapore, this will be a sustainable and wise move.

More importantly, it will reshape attitudes and mindsets towards our relationship with the dead and reframe our understanding of death care and dignity as an extension of healthcare, as well as part of a comprehensive ecology of care.

Adjunct Associate Professor Tan Heng Hao in his Forum letter said that women receiving egg donation face psychological barriers (Menopausal women seeking IVF: Guidelines being worked out, Sept 28).

It is imperative that new legislation also addresses the psychological and ethical issues faced by sperm or egg donors, and donor-conceived offspring. With the Government lifting age restrictions on in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment, it is anticipated that there will be a steady increase in egg donation cases.

There are strong cultural taboos against incest; as such, sperm/egg donors often worry about accidental incest between their artificially-conceived offspring, as well as with their own natural children. This has deterred many would-be donors and causes a perennial shortage of sperm/egg donors in Singapore, an informal survey by news portal AsiaOne a few years ago showed.

This issue is not trivial, considering the well-documented phenomenon of genetic sexual attraction - sexual attraction between close relatives who first meet as adults. There have been several such reported cases of accidental incest between siblings who were separated at birth and adopted by different families.

Given Singapore's size and high population density, there are even greater chances of accidental incest.

Additionally, personal and familial health information about the sperm/egg donor should be shared. For example, many diseases can be inherited, such as breast cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Sperm/egg donors may develop these diseases later in life, or they may remain healthy, but their close relatives may be afflicted. 인터넷바카라

Moreover, the advent of DNA home-testing kits and online genealogy databases based on such DNA tests have made it more difficult to conceal from donor offspring the truth about their conception.

Hence the Ministry of Health should set up a centralised sperm and egg donor registry to manage the collection and sharing of such confidential information. Former sperm/egg donors can be prompted to regularly update the registry with their latest health information as well as that of their family members.

Non-identifying information, such as the number of children born per donor, their sex and year of birth, should be readily disclosed to sperm/egg donors, their conceived offspring and recipient parents to avoid accidental incest.