Doctor, Doctor! and Then on to the Community Centre”
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BIBLIOASIA JUL - SEP 2019 VOL. 15 ISSUE 02 FEATURE “travelling dispensaries” twice a month. college days at the University of Malaya in cloth round and round my foot. They hadn’t These dispensaries were ships kitted out Singapore: “My medical cohort had 100 cleaned it first. But the wound healed; no with a pharmacy and medical equipment. students. I took the bus to college every tetanus or anything like that.” With it, she visited Singapore’s outlying islets, day… I was doing open heart surgery, Housewife Yau Chung Chii including Semakau, Sebarok, Sudong and practising on dogs.” remembered well the kitchen-table Seraya. The ship would berth itself some When Singapore attained self- wisdom passed down to her generation. distance away from the shore, so she had government in 1959, its leaders had to Speaking in Cantonese, Yau said, for to “go right up to the island in a motorboat, overcome the most fundamental problems example, that pregnant women would Doctor, Doctor! and then on to the community centre”. to give the nation a fighting chance to avoid lamb, lest it gave their babies Well into the 1960s, healthcare in thrive. Founding Prime Minister Lee epilepsy. Upon giving birth, women would Singapore was largely rudimentary, and Kuan Yew listed his Cabinet’s priorities be fed pig’s trotters stewed with ginger Singapore’s Medical Services not just on the nation’s outlying islands. as the setting up of defence forces; the and black vinegar, a dish thought to be Renowned gynaecologist Dr Tow Siang provision of affordable public housing effective in ridding their bodies of gas. Hwa, who headed KK Hospital in the for all; the restructuring of the education She added that, however, some mothers Milestones in Singapore’s medical scene – among other subjects 1960s, said that at the time, “women system; more stringent family planning to told their doctors that they feared the – are captured through fascinating oral history narratives in a new walked into KK Hospital to have their 12th curb over-population; and the creation vinegar would be so acidic that “it would book written by Cheong Suk-Wai and published by the National or 15th baby. Maternal complications of of jobs for the tens of thousands who melt their plastic stitches”. She added: Archives of Singapore. the most horrendous kind were a common were unemployed then. Against all these “The doctors said, ‘No such nonsense. experience. Maternal deaths from bleed- pressing necessities, Lee judged the But if you believe it, don’t eat it’.” ing, from obstetric complications, from development of medical services and The Malays had plant-based pastes Life is a race against time. That much was obstructed labour and from malpractice improvement in healthcare to be, perhaps, and potions for women in confinement. clear to midwife Sumitera Mohd Letak outside.” Speaking to the Oral History fifth or sixth on his list of to-dos. To Midwife Sumitera remembered two – after she helped a patient with dangerously Centre in July 1997, Tow added: “All this compound matters, the government was param and jamu. “Param was a herbal lhigh blood pressure who had just given is never seen again today.” strapped for cash. concoction that you rubbed all over the birth. “She was bleeding like hell,” Sumitera Singapore’s colonial administrators So Singaporeans made do, as they mother’s body. It opened the pores, out recalled. “Her baby was gasping away had provided free clinics for the needy, always had, with traditional folk medicine of which impurities oozed… if you went and I had to suck mucus out of her baby’s but these were few and far between. “The or, more often, store-cupboard remedies. near those using param, they smelled so mouth… I had to, by hook or by crook, take colonial government did give us free medi- Eugene Wijeysingha, a former Prin- sweet, [with] none of that fishy afterbirth them to hospital.” cal care at Outram Park outpatient clinic,” cipal of Raffles Institution, recalled that, as smell which was caused by the poor flow Alas, the mother, baby and midwife Chinatown resident Soh Siew Cheong a boy, he cut his foot deeply while running of blood.” were on St John’s Island, which is about recalled. In the 1960s, Tow recalled that around barefoot playing cops and robbers Jamu was consumed to expel any 6.5 km south of mainland Singapore. What fewer than 50 medical specialists prac- with his mates. “Blood was dripping and blood clots after giving birth. “It’s a spicy was worse, it was the middle of the night. tised in Singapore. Among those training we went to someone’s house nearby,” he herbal paste; you mixed it with water and Sumitera added: “It was low tide, so I had to be one was Dr Yong Nen Khiong. Yong, said. “They got a piece of cloth, put coffee drank it. It also helped the womb contract to wake up the whole row of people in the who became a heart surgeon, recalled his powder and sugar on it, and wrapped the and return to normal size faster.”Sumitera quarters there to give me a helping hand.” The roused boatmen put the ailing mother (Facing page) A van and baby in a big sampan. Sumitera and converted into a travelling the woman’s husband and mother climbed dispensary to reach those in too and they rushed to Jardine Steps at living in the rural areas Keppel Harbour. Upon their arrival, the of Singapore. Ministry of Information and the ambulance from Kandang Kerbau (KK) Arts Collection, courtesy Hospital was nowhere in sight, so Sumitera of National Archives of left the woman in the care of her husband Singapore. and the harbour police. (Right) Many swore She flagged down a taxi and, with the by traditional Chinese baby in her arms and its grandmother in tonics brewed from roots, tow, rushed to KK Hospital. Sadly, the baby barks and seeds, such as died there, but its mother was saved. “She those dispensed here in 1983 by Eu Yan Sang was in hospital for three weeks because (余仁生) medical hall her blood pressure did not come down,” on South Bridge Road. Sumitera recalled, adding that, fortunately, This medical hall was “the hospital treated her for free”. founded by Eu Tong Sen, Sumitera, who was born in 1942, joined after whom the street is named, who treated the Singapore’s medical service as a midwife ailments of the humblest in the 1960s. She was among those in the folk. Eu Yan Sang has since Public Health Division who went out in grown into a globally renowned brand. Ministry of Information and the Cheong Suk-Wai is a lawyer by training and a writer Arts Collection, courtesy by choice. A former ASEAN Scholar and Thomson of National Archives of Foundation Scholar, she has been a construction Singapore. litigator, a journalist and a public servant. 36 37 BIBLIOASIA JUL - SEP 2019 VOL. 15 ISSUE 02 FEATURE never forgot how basic the islanders’ later named after him. Tay’s Syndrome, SARS: All Hell Breaks Loose lives were even after Singapore became as it became known, is a disease associ- The yearly panic about HFMD is nothing independent. Women and girls who were ated with intellectual impairment, short compared to the terror that seized many menstruating folded cloth, into which stature, decreased fertility, brittle hair, Singaporeans when the Severe Acute they crumpled newspaper, to stanch their and dry, red and scaly skin, making an Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) began bleeding. They would not heed Sumitera’s eight-year-old child look 80 years old. infecting people here in March 2003. advice to use the sanitary pads that she In 1972, Tay made newspaper head- The very contagious SARS, which distributed to them regularly. “They said lines when he saved many Singaporeans originated in diseased civet cats in China, they would keep it and use it only when from over-the-counter pills and tonics hit Singapore in March 2003, after air they travelled to mainland Singapore.” that had life-threatening levels of arsenic. stewardess Esther Mok caught it from These included Sin Lak pills, which killed an elderly man in Hong Kong, with whom Singaporean Trailblazers a woman who had taken them to cure she had shared an elevator. Mok, also Amid this rough-and-ready approach to her asthma. He fingered poverty as the known as Patient Zero then, survived personal hygiene, some Singaporean doc- root of such drug-related deaths. “It has SARS but watched her parents, uncle tors were already blazing trails in caring to do with the cost of living,” he mused. and pastor die from the disease, which for patients. “So such over-the-counter drugs are the spreads through infected droplets. Pathologist Prof Kanagaratnam first line of treatment.” Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) in Shanmugaratnam, for one, made sure that Fortunately, he noted, “Singapore is Novena, where Mok had sought treat- anyone in Singapore who had cancer could good with regulating” and so there were ment, was designated SARS Central, the seek treatment for it without difficulty. fewer deaths than there might have been nerve centre for treating SARS patients, Shanmugaratnam, whose son Tharman from such self-medication. although the disease subsequently spread is a former Deputy Prime Minister of Also, in 1972, Tay became the first to Singapore General Hospital (SGH), Singapore (and currently Senior Minister), doctor to identify Hand, Foot and Mouth Changi General Hospital and National set up a population-based cancer registry Disease (HMFD) in Singapore. His wife, University Hospital, in that order. Ironi- in 1968. At the time, he said, “there were who is also a doctor, alerted him that she cally, according to hospital administrator hardly any private clinics in Singapore”.