Two new national specialist centres will be set up at the National University Hospital to meet the growing need for heart and cancer treatments.

The two existing centres next to the Singapore General Hospital in Outram are already stretched, even as demand for specialist care in dealing with Singapore's top two killers grows.

Heart and cancer patients will have more choice and, in the long run, better care, said Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan yesterday.

Singapore now has one national centre each for cancer, and diseases of the heart, eye, skin and brain. They pilot new treatments and handle the more complicated and rare cases. Once the procedures become routine, the other general hospitals adopt them.

By concentrating resources in these centres, Singapore has achieved 'high standards of medical care at the lowest possible cost'.

But the status quo will no longer do. Singapore's population has grown very quickly from 3.5 million to 4.5 million people and 'I have to be prepared for when it is 5.5 million, which could be in 10 years or less', he told reporters after the Healthcare Charity Run yesterday.

The demand is clear.

Ten years ago, there were 7,000 new cancer patients a year. Today, it is 9,000 and by 2015, it will be 13,000.

The National Cancer Centre is running out of room. It had to move its cafe into the car park and take over space from the nearby Health Promotion Board.

The pattern is similar for heart problems, with the number of outpatient treatments set to jump from 200,000 a year now to 320,000 by 2015.

The 13-year-old National Heart Centre, which treats about half the heart patients, had to start Saturday clinics for its subsidised patients this year, to cope with the demand.

'It is really chock-a-block now. Every nook and cranny is being made use of,' said Mr Khaw.

Looking ahead, he said: 'I'm asking the existing specialty centres to aim higher. Centres like the Singapore National Eye Centre...ought to look at their role as the referral centres of the region.'

He added that the ministry will be consulting senior doctors to see which other national specialty centres are needed for the future.

Associate Professor Tan Huay Cheem, head of cardiology at NUH, expects the specialist centres at NUH to 'have a more academic slant', with greater emphasis on research and training.

Being part of a tertiary hospital is also good, Prof Tan said, as heart patients often have other medical problems such as diabetes.

There are certainly advantages to the patient for cardiologists to work closely with specialists in other fields, he said.

Professor John Wong, a senior oncologist at NUH, agreed that research would be an important element. He said: 'Singapore needs to solve Singapore's problems. Some of our cancers are unique to this area.'

Since NUH is a university hospital, it also has to train the next generation of specialists, Prof Wong said.

Finding specialists for the two new centres will be a key challenge, said Mr Khaw, who believes that whenever the opportunity arises, 'we should recruit specialists from outside of Singapore'.

He expanded the list of medical schools Singapore can look to for doctors to achieve this. Last year, Singapore trained 200 local doctors and recruited a similar number from overseas.

'I would prefer to grow the pace much faster,' said Mr Khaw, who wanted to see about 300 doctors for each group