$290,000 raised for Assisi Hospice

By ARTHUR LEE

The sum was raised from the sale of tables and private donations as well as a charity auction. A generous donor pledged $10,000 after the formal cheque presentation, making the donation in memory of his sister, Amelia Tham.

Some of the notable items on auction included a Jaeger Atmos clock, a grey South Sea pearl necklace, a pair of business class return tickets to Beijing on Singapore Airlines with a three-night suite stay at Raffles Beijing Hotel.

The pearls were auctioned for $15,000; the Atmos clock, $11,000; and the Beijing trip, $9,888.

The Assisi Hospice operates with an annual budget of $6 million. Of this, about a third comes from the Ministry of Health and other sources, leaving the hospice to raise the balance of $4 million from public donations. Last year, the hospice looked after 1,088 patients of whom 90 were children.

Said Khoo Chow Huat, CEO of Mount Alvernia Hospital: 'With a greying population, we expect more people to need the services of the hospices. Even today, there is a shortage in the supply of palliative care services and hospice beds.

'We are working with the ministry on how we can expand our capacity but even at this moment, we have a waiting list for our services and we expect this to worsen. With the support from the community and the ministry, we hope to expand our capacity and services to meet the needs of the future.'

Lee Geok Hoon, 52, told BT that she and her family are truly grateful for the care that Assisi Hospice had given her late mother who spent her last days as an in-patient there. Her late mother had fought cancer for three-and-a-half years before succumbing to the disease.

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