Wed, Sep 05, 2007
Mind Your Body, The Straits Times
Resilient, like her patients
Paediatric oncologist and haemotologist Dr Tan Poh Lin, 39, performed a stem-cell transplant from cord blood on five-year-old Jayjay last month.
Jayjay suffered from a rare genetic immuno-deficiency disorder that causes frequent lung and respiratory tract infections. He is the second recipient of cord blood from the Singapore Cord Blood Bank, less than two years after it opened its doors.
'The graft has taken and Jayjay is currently doing very well,' Dr Tan said, smiling.
She specialises in helping children battle cancer - sometimes an uphill task.
It was similarly uphill when she went to medical school. Then, only 60 out of the 180 students in her batch were girls.
'We certainly felt like the minority and that made us determined to show we were just as good, if not better than the boys,' she said.
But she was pretty much used to scrapping. At home she had two brothers to 'fight for my share of the pie'.
The assumption when she was training to be a doctor was that women doctors would eventually quit to stay home with the kids.
'I was determined to prove my mettle,' she said. Like other students, she did the rounds of specialties.
When the time came to choose a speciality, she picked paediatric medicine, as she felt most at home dealing with children, said Dr Tan, now the mother of a nine-year-old girl.
Family support was vital in helping her cope with work and parenting, she admits. Her parents and in-laws willingly help with baby sitting when she needs to put in extra hours at the hospital.
'The intensity in my speciality is great, especially when I know I am usually the last hope for these children and their parents,' she said.
'What is really inspiring is how resilient the children are. Yes, they cry or scream in pain when treatment is being administered but when you make them feel better it is all smiles and laughter again and everything is forgotten.'
'If I hadn't been a doctor, I would have been a lawyer and perhaps helped out in my dad's business,' declared Dr Ann Tan, president of the Association of Women Doctors (Singapore).
Fortunately for her, Dr Tan, 44, was part of the 30per cent of women in her batch to be picked for medical school. A total of 160 students were accepted that year.
'As women, we were a rare commodity and I would like to believe that it worked in our favour,' she said.
As with other housemen, Dr Tan did her share of rounds - moving from one discipline to another, from one hospital to another.
'I was attached to the neonatal department at the Singapore General Hospital. Seeing how tiny the premies (premature babies) were, I promised myself that I would go into obstetrics and gynaecology, and deliver better babies than what I was getting,' she said.
Now a consultant with the Women and Fetal Centre, Dr Tan has not slowed her pace of work.
Her patients come first so she was late for this interview as she was helping to birth a healthy baby boy. 'It is not easy being a doctor. Not for men and equally not for women. It would take an enlightened man to be able to keep up with a doctor wife who is equally strong,' she admitted.
Dr Tan keeps long hours but makes sure she spends quality time with her three daughters.
'I send them to school in the morning and while we are in the car, talk about their day before and their plans for the rest of the day,' she said.
She also takes her daughters out individually to ensure they get to know her intimately and she them.
As president of the AWDS, she hopes women doctors will be able to become mentors to younger women doctors and inspire them to stay in the profession 'long after they become wives and mothers'.
If there was a face of public health in Singapore, it would be Associate Professor Leo Yee Sin's.
Over the years, the epidemiologist has charted and studied the infectious disease scourges of our time - from HIV/Aids to Sars and the dengue virus.
But it was the rise of HIV which propelled Prof Leo, 47, into the study of infectious diseases in 1989.
It quickly taught her empathy for her patients.
'I am not an Aids activist. But as a doctor or nurse treating them, we face prejudices too. I hear whispers like 'Is she a lesbian?' or 'Is she from a dubious background herself?'' she said.
Prof Leo said the stigma was a blessing in disguise for health care workers determined to work in her field.
'I am able to put myself in my patients' shoes and I developed a stronger commitment to what I was doing,' she said.
Prof Leo came from a humble background though she declines to elaborate.
'When I entered the university, I had two choices - to read three years of Business Administration or go to medical school for five years,' she said.
She knew it would be a burden on her family, so when she picked medical school, she spent the next five years counting every penny and spending very little.
'Being among a handful of women who got into medical school was not my concern. I was determined to give my best in any field I picked,' she said.
The mother of three admits her passion lies in research, especially of re-emerging pathogens like dengue and tuberculosis, of which we still understand so little.
'We are not able to answer clinical questions adequately unless we invest enough time and effort in research,' she said.
Soft-spoken and mild, Associate Professor Saw Seang Mei, 43, might be mistaken for being a soft touch.
In fact, the serious-minded statistician and public health expert has, for the last nine years, led the biggest study ever undertaken in Singapore on myopia levels in schoolchildren.
Trained in epidemiology, or the study of presence of disease in populations, Prof Saw has focused her attention on the eyes and eyesight.
'I had always been interested in ophthalmology. The eyes, and having the ability to see well, are important to me,' she said.
Her first study found that up to 80per cent of Singaporeans are living with myopia, or short-sightedness. This means the country is sitting on a time bomb for blinding eye diseases.
Myopia is caused by an elongation of the eyeball. A person with severe short-sightedness can lose some of his sight by the time he is 36.
Prof Saw decided to collected data on the environmental factors that might cause short-sightedness in 300 school-age children.
Needing time to to identify these factors - which can differ greatly from child to child - as well as genetic factors, her team from the Singapore Eye Research Institute tracked the children over the next nine years.
'Myopia is worrying as it will eventually lead to blindness when not treated appropriately. Through research we would be able to understand the condition, find the cause or even a solution, and try to nip it in the bud,' she said.
Her team is now hoping to shed light on myopia by looking at the link between genes and the environment - this time focusing on babies between the ages of six and 72 months.
When not at the research bench, you might find her teaching statistics and public health to undergraduates and post-graduates as the Assistant Dean of the Yong Loo Lin school of medicine.
The mother of two girls said: 'Learning should be fun. It brings out the best in us. In medical school, we enjoyed interacting with patients and working in teams and, at the same time, we also worked hard and did our best.'
But though teaching brings satisfaction, her true love is public health.
'The information my team and I gather is used to plan and evaluate strategies for preventing diseases - in this case, myopia. It is also used as a guide to manage those already suffering from the condition. I guess it is a different path, a different reward,' she said.
