Press Releases & Archive

SiMES Introductory Speech

Assoc Prof Donald Tan, Director, Singapore Eye Research Institute

Our Guest of Honor, Assoc Prof Yaacob Ibrahim, Minister for Community Development & Sports, Minister-in-charge of Muslim Affairs, and soon-to-be Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Mr Haji Mohammad Alami Musa, President of MUIS, the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore, Ms Zubaidah Osman, Policy Manager of Yayasan Mendaki, distinguished guests and colleagues, thank you for gracing us with your presence today at this official launch of the Singapore Malay Eye Study.

It was announced in yesterday’s papers that this evening, our new Prime Minister brings in a new Cabinet, balanced between older veterans and younger ministers, to lead Singaporeans in the years ahead. They will lead, however, a population which unfortunately, is not well-balanced between young and old, but definitely slanted towards the older generation, and which is rapidly ageing. Over the last 3 decades, the percentage of our population over the age of 65 has more than doubled, and the percentage of those over the age of 75 has more than tripled. We are all aware that our health deteriorates with age, and none more so than serious eye conditions, which predominantly affect the elderly. Diabetes, glaucoma, cataract, age-related macular degeneration, these are all common ageing diseases of the eye which can cause blindness, and we need to address the current, and future problems in visual health that face our generation and the next.

The impact of visual disability should not be underestimated. In surveys conducted, blindness is the most feared disability of all. In addition to the obvious impact on one’s quality of life, studies have shown that those with even mild forms of visual disability have twice the risk of falls, 4 times the risk of hip fractures, are 3 times more likely to suffer from depression, and amazingly, 2.5 times more likely to die earlier in life.

Since its inception, therefore, a major focus of the Singapore Eye Research Institute has been to concentrate on research programs aimed at ultimately reducing eye diseases in our ageing population. To address this problem, we must first obtain accurate statistics on the number of major eye diseases causing visual disability in Singaporeans, and the impact of visual loss in the community.

To this aim, the Singapore Eye Disease Study, or SEDS for short, was first initiated in 1996. SEDS is designed specifically to determine the prevalence and risk factors of major eye diseases in the adult population in Singapore, and consists of a consecutive trilogy of 3 population-based eye surveys geared at sequentially examining the 3 main racial groups in our population, namely, Chinese, Malays and Indians. The first of these 3 surveys was conducted in 1996, and was known as the Tanjong Pagar Survey. This was a study of over 1000 Chinese Singaporeans living in the Tanjong Pagar district, and provided us with the first accurate data on the prevalence of important causes of blindness such as cataract, glaucoma and refractive errors. From this study, we now know that the prevalence and risk factors for cataract is largely similar to Western populations, but that the rates of myopia and glaucoma appear to be higher. Dr Steve Seah, Principal Investigator of this study, will give us more facts which have emerged from the Tanjong Pagar Study.

Today, the Singapore Eye Research Institute, in collaboration with the Singapore National Eye Centre, National University Hospital, and National University of Singapore, is launching the 2nd in the SEDS trilogy, which is named the Singapore Malay Eye Study, or SiMES for short. With the generous support and advice of both Yayasan Mendaki and the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS), SiMES is a population based study to assess the causes and risk factors of blindness and visual impairment in our Malay community, over a 3 year period. Funded by the National Medical Research Council, SiMES will examine 3,200 Malay adults aged between 40 to 80 years. These individuals will be identified by random sampling of residential districts in the Southern Central part of Singapore (namely, Outram, Bukit Merah and Queenstown, which were chosen as they were conveniently located in close proximity to our SiMES clinic here in SERI). The Principal Investigator for SiMES, is Dr Wong Tien Yin, who is Asst Prof at the NUS Dept of Ophthalmology, and who is also a Consultant Ophthalmologist at SNEC. Dr Wong is responsible for designing SiMES, and is one of our leading MD PhDs with an international reputation in the field of ocular epidemiology. Assoc Prof Saw Seang Mei, from the NUS Dept of Community, Occupation and Family Medicine, and myself, will be assisting Dr Wong as his Co-Principal Investigators.

SiMES will be the first large-scale survey of its kind to be conducted for a Malay community in the world. A preliminary study conducted in rural Indonesia by Assoc Prof Saw has assisted in the planning and design of SiMES, and she will be presenting data from that survey in a short while. On the home front, SiMES will provide important and previously unavailable public health information on the frequency of the most important eye diseases affecting Malay Singaporeans, which will aid in strategic planning of cost-effective public health policies in ophthalmology which may ultimately reduce blindness and visual disability in our ageing population.

In conclusion, I would like to thank Assoc Prof Yaacob Ibrahim for his presence and participation here today to officially launch SiMES, and Yayasan Mendaki and the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore again, for gracing us with their presence here today, and for their generous advocacy of support of SiMES.

Thank you for your attention.