how much is the price of a life ?

[daisyt]

They rather think a person choose to escape than to put in extra effort to evaluate.

[vlim]

Oh gosh .. So sad to read the above posts .. :sad: ....

Every life is precious ... Every ns man is someone's precious son whom they have brought up with care and love .. :sad:

[kiddo]

verykiasu2010:

we spent millions and millions every where with questionable necessity and sting on $250k ? what kind of warped logic do we have in the gov't ? it is not even 10% of the PM's salary. What cost ?


if we really value life, what is $250k ? or even a few of $250k ?

it is just 3 pieces of COE

250k ....peanut ! kacang ! our children worth more billion put together
money cannot pay the bleeding heart of a parent.

sighnn... can we not understand unless the lost is so close to us????
Time for a wake up call .

[Oppsgal]

Way2GO:

verykiasu2010:

probably not even one peanut

Its at d lowest end of six-figure sum for a life lost while serving.
One shd also be aware dat most, if not all, insurance policies, specifically exclude all claims if injury/loss of life occurs as a result of military involvement.
So wat MINDEF pays out is all a deceased soldier's family gets n it is really much less than a peanut for a life.
Understand MINDEF is now encouraging soldiers to take part in a Group Insurance policy, its optional but soldiers hv to pay out of their own pockets.

Should do free health screening before sent for training? I think group insurance also cannot do much a help if dead. (touch wood).

[verykiasu2010]

Oppsgal:

Way2GO:

[quote=\"verykiasu2010\"]

probably not even one peanut

Its at d lowest end of six-figure sum for a life lost while serving.
One shd also be aware dat most, if not all, insurance policies, specifically exclude all claims if injury/loss of life occurs as a result of military involvement.
So wat MINDEF pays out is all a deceased soldier's family gets n it is really much less than a peanut for a life.
Understand MINDEF is now encouraging soldiers to take part in a Group Insurance policy, its optional but soldiers hv to pay out of their own pockets.

Should do free health screening before sent for training? I think group insurance also cannot do much a help if dead. (touch wood).[/quote]what is needed is those in depth and detailed screening, not the normal usual cursory health screening

[tired mom]

verykiasu2010:

we spent millions and millions every where with questionable necessity and sting on $250k ? what kind of warped logic do we have in the gov't ? it is not even 10% of the PM's salary. What cost ?


if we really value life, what is $250k ? or even a few of $250k ?

it is just 3 pieces of COE

I must first state that my heart goes out to all who have lost their sons through national service, and one life lost is one life too many.

But coming back to detailed mass screening of the boys, the cost and effort is colossal. One machine costs $250k, but to scan the whole cohort, one would need hundreds of these machines. Even then, equipment cost is just money and surmountable. It is the manpower that is needed to scan and medically evaluate the whole cohort of boys, that is difficult to pull together. With a healthcare system that is already bursting at the seams, it is impossible to organise any large-scale screening in the foreseeable future. It needs a sizeable period of planning and preparation.

But of course, we can start NOW....

[pinky]

if their routine health check failed to pick up some medical problems which was earlier confirmed by private specialists, which one will they

follow?
:nailbite: :yikes:

[3Boys]

Ok, what is the rate of asthmatic deaths in Singapore in the non-military setting versus the rate of asthmatic deaths during NS training?


What is the rate of suicide in the suicidally depressed in the non-military setting versus the rate of suicide during NS related activities?

Not trying to make a point here, but before we can decide if there is something to be chased, I’d like to see the numbers.

N.B. I do have 3 boys so training safety is obviously a concern.

[3Boys]

pinky:

if their routine health check failed to pick up some medical problems which was earlier confirmed by private specialists, which one will they

follow?
:nailbite: :yikes:

Actually if we exclude any minor medical condition from combat duty, (especially diagnoses from private specialists, who are in the pay of the NS boy's parents, who can go doctor-hopping until they find someone who will concur), we won't have a fighting force to speak of.

The final say is the medical board, chaired by internal and/or external medical specialists.

[3Boys]

NS is a shared responsibility amongst all the parents of boys. If we were to put out a poll here, which parent would be willing for their son to be enrolled as a Commando trainee, how many folk would say yes? By the same token, if you had a choice to have your son placed in a combat vs service vocation, what would you choose?


Therefore, NS is compulsory, not discretionary. The choice of vocations is also determined by the commanders, not parents (or influence wielded thereof).

As for screening and medical cover, I think one can always make the case that more is better. The more difficult question is at what point does 'more' become unsustainable, and perhaps getting very little bang for the effort.

Let's us the example of cardiac ultrasound. I don't really know the numbers but lets play with some scenarios to understand when it would be effective and when it is not.

Assuming a birth cohort is about 36,000 annually, and half are boys, MINDEF would be enrolling about 18,000 boys per year. Dr Leslie Lam is presumably talking about structural heart issues which can be detected by ultrasound, a chief one would be hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). A reference to prevalence of HCM is here --> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7641357. Based on this paper, it is about 0.2% (2 out of 1000). So, in a cohort of 36,000, we may expect about 72 cases.

How about the risks of death from HCM? Here is another reference for you --> http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/152913-overview#aw2aab6b2b5. Based on this, it is expected to be about 1-3% per year.

So, we may expect 1-2 patients with HCM who are at risk of dying from the condition every year, even in the natural setting.

Now on the cost and resource side. Assuming CMPB can do health screenings year round. With 250 working days a year, CMPB needs to screen 72 recruits a day, to get through 18,000. Assuming each ultrasound takes 30 minutes, and each machine/cardiologist pair can screen 15 patients per day, you need 18 machine/cardiologist pair working full time, 250 days a year JUST to do ultrasound scanning of the heart for NS recruits. Last time I checked, there were about 160 cardiologists in Singapore.

So, not taking sides here, but I suppose the question is whether we commit >10% of our cardiologist resource annually and 18 ultrasound machines to perhaps mitigate (not eliminate, for the serviceman may die from the heart condition anyway regardless of what you do) the risk of 1-2 deaths a year from a single heart condition?

By the way, a medical screening goes well beyond the heart, and every test for every condition you think off can be subject to the same analysis above.

So, just taking a cold hard look at the numbers, if we have up to 1 child dying in school per year per cohort from heart related issues, and up to 2 NS man dying per year from heart related issues, that is basically the background rate for sudden cardiac death. The only difference is that if they die in school and NS, the g'ment gets blamed, and if they die outside of that, the doctors get blamed

(Genes never get blamed, by the way)