Silver Tsunami

As said earlier on in this article, I believe that our government has done a stand up job in trying to manage an ageing population and have put in place a multitude of healthcare schemes, grants etc to manage the growing demand for palliative care. However, the onus shouldnt be just on them to facilitate change, we must also play our own role in this system. And this leads me to my first obstacle: “NIMBY” syndrome

 

“Not in my backyard” or NIMBY syndrome basically states how most people can agree that having more nursing homes or elderly care facilities are generally beneficial to society but do not want these facilities built near their home for various reasons. Hence there lies the disparity, where people want more healthcare but are unwilling to bear the burden. I think this issue is particularly prominent in Singapore because of our limited land area. With just 730 sq km of land area, which is even smaller than New York City, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage the growing needs of the population and not impose more burden on the people.

So what can be done about this mentality?

 Well one practical solution which has sprung up recently is “vertical Kampungs”, a new trial project being developed right where I live at Yew Tee. Following the trend of vertical farming, this project offers seniors housing and healthcare facilities stacked on top of one another! 

A more optimistic solution would be a change in public mentality. As our population rapidly ages and more and more people's parents get old, perhaps this may catalyse a change in public attitudes and make people more accepting towards more nursing homes being built near their residences.

 

The issue which I believe will grow into a much larger social problem later on is technology. When you give your 5 year old a phone, they can pick up how to use it almost immediately, knowing how to use all the basic apps, surfing the internet and creating unfunny tiktoks. Me, a 20 year old, am already confused with some of the new apps, games and social media widgets that my juniors seem to be using. So it would be safe to assume that most seniors today are not very tech savvy and probably do not have a good handle on using electronics. Given the exponential rate of technological progress today, with new Iphones, operating systems and blockchains coming up every year, I conjecture that this will lead to a growing issue in our senior population. Hence this actually also poses a significant issue for our healthcare system. With more and more services being digitised and information on new services, schemes etc all published online, a significant number of seniors may not know how to access these services hence this limits the amount of assistance we are able to provide. This issue is further compounded by the current Covid-19 pandemic as more services are transferred online such as QR code payments and menus, Contactless delivery services and virtual patient consultations. 

So the question is now how may we disseminate information to the elderly masses in a form which they can easily understand and access? A question for another time perhaps.