Enrolment Numbers for Medical Studies

Mr Gan Thiam Poh asked the Minister for Health in view of the shortage of medical practitioners and our rapidly ageing population, whether the Ministry has plans to increase the intake of Singapore citizens for our universities' medical faculties.

Mr Gan Kim Yong: In view of our growing and ageing population, and the rising prevalence of chronic diseases among Singaporeans, MOH expects demand for healthcare services to rise over time. Consequently, the demand for medical manpower will also increase. In response to this, MOH has put in place two key strategies to ensure that we have sufficient numbers of well-trained Singaporean doctors to meet our increased healthcare needs.

Firstly, we have expanded the local pipeline for doctor training. This year, our medical schools graduated a total of 279 new doctors. The Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS) has been progressively increasing its training capacity over time, and will take in 300 students annually by 2012. The Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, which was established in 2007, now takes in about 50 students a year.

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Singapore's third and newest medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), will begin training its first batch of 50 students in August 2013 and will gradually increase its annual intake to 150 students eventually. At steady state, the three medical schools will train a total of about 500 doctors annually. This is almost double the number currently.

Secondly, we are stepping up efforts to attract Singaporeans studying medicine overseas to return back to Singapore. Last year, our public healthcare clusters introduced the pre-employment grant (PEG) which provides financial support for overseas Singaporean medical students during their final two years of study. The grant was very well-received by Singaporean students studying in the United Kingdom and Australia, with 68 awards given out last year. We aim to attract back more overseas-trained Singaporean doctors in the coming years.

Together, the expanded local training pipeline and recruitment of overseas-trained Singaporeans will increase our supply of Singaporean doctors to meet increased healthcare needs.