Extraordinary Doctors: Johor Bahru: Dr Ho Ung Chek

Extraordinary Doctors: Johor Bahru: Dr Ho Ung Chek

 

by Dr Tan Chow Wei

 

I am proud to be one of the very few doctors who knows Dr. Ho Ung Chek personally and still keep in touch with him by phone almost on monthly basis (in fact, just had a long chat with him 2 days ago).  

 

Dr. Ho Ung Chek is truly a legend.  His popularity is not due to eloquence of speech (David Quek rightly noted that he spoke little but yet able to command respect from his patients).  He was also humble enough to admit what he was not sure.  

 

25 years ago when I was the first GP to practise abdominal ultrasound, he used to refer suspected gall stones, renal stones, fibroids, and ovarian cysts to me for "confirmation", and I found him to be right >90% of time, just based on good old "history & physical examination"!  He also referred his patients to me for ECGs.  

 

Those were days before the birth of Johor Specialist Hospital and other private hospitals.  That's how we became good friends and colleagues.  When he retired and sold his clinic (alas, now closed due to poor management),  he wrote case summaries of his most faithful patients and told them to come and see me. That's why I need to "report" to him regularly --- mind you, he knows all his patients by name together with names of their family memebrs!). 

 

Little known is his special interest in Multiple Sclerosis which he managed with remarkable results with interferon and regular doses of bee venom therapy (Apitherapy).  One of the patients we co-managed is a 50+ year old Chinese lady who was quadriplegic and half-blind due to MS, and was in severe depression.  When started on BVT, she made such progress that she is now able to move around in a wheelchair and has regained motor power of both hands to grade 3.  Just saw her last week in my clinic, she cheerfully told me that she is looking forward to hold up in her hands her 1st grand child who is arriving in June this year.  

 

In Monash where I am teaching Family Medicine, the Year 4 curriculum has now been revamped to put the highest emphasis on GP, on top of Pychiatry, O&G, and Paediatrics. 

 

I believe that the future is still bright for general practice if we as GPs do not allow ourselves to degenerate into "cough-and-cold" doctors but instead to upgrade by CME/CPD so that we can hold our heads up as "specialists in the breadth of medicine". Woe to those who resist change and refuse to learn, for medicine is always a life-long learning experience.

 

Dr Tan Chow Wei, is also a GP and attached to the Monash University Medical School, Johor Bahru, as Professor of Family Medicine.

Extraordinary Doctors: Johor Bahru: Dr Alice & Jimmy Low

Extraordinary Doctors: Johor Bahru: Dr Alice & Jimmy Low

by Dr Wong Yin Onn, JB 


Drs Jimmy and Alice Low were the first batch graduates from the (Queen Mary Hospital) Hong Kong University after the second world war.

Dr Alice (now a sprightly 84 years) in particular has a most interesting life; her parents were university graduates(!) at a time when education was a premium and her parents came to then rural Malaya from China to help set up Chinese schools. The Foon Yew school here in Johor Bahru is one such effort, and she was born in the Philippines when her parents were posted there to start a Chinese school.

They were then posted to South Africa where they brought Alice along and where she studied up till secondary school. Her 2 very young sisters were left in Ipoh with relatives as it was considered too dangerous to go to Africa. The WW2 separated them without any form of communication. After the war, the parents returned to Malaya to continue teaching. Foon Yew students post war will remember them.

Alice went to HKU to study medicine and DR Jimmy fr Penang was her classmate.

They graduated and got married, settling down to JB after postings in Hospital Johor Bahru (now Hospital Sultan Aminah, HSA), and for Dr Jimmy as MOIC in Kota Tinggi hospital, then a communist-infested area and he being the ONLY doctor in the whole district. Incidentally, Dr Han Suyin (famous Chinese-born physician, who wrote a prize-winning novel about Malaya, then, "And the Rain My Drink", and "A Many Splendoured Thing") was their Pathology tutor in Hong Kong University, and the Master of the Ladies' Hall, and in JB she was also MO at HSA and Dr Alice was in her footsteps, literally.

The husband and wife doctors' team set up their own clinic in JB where there were then only 6 GPs! A lifetime of service to the community followed, and Dr Jimmy was a well-known local judo sinseh (Master). They were almost always attending at all the CME meetings, until poor health led to retirement. (This went on for decades, and I could also remember them coming to one of my lectures in the late 1980s, then, when we had the opportunity to meet again... DQ)

Dr Jimmy had since passed on while Dr Alice lives alone in their rambling old bungalow now. Their patients like you Dr David were their children, for they have none themselves. A few doctors visit her regularly now to chat and and take her out for a meal. She in turn helps to take care of Dr Putli Martin, the most senior doctor in JB at 95 years, who is now bedridden. She organises the 2 full-time aides who nurse Dr Martin 24/7.

I am privileged to be involved in their medical care for many years and hence got to know them well.

This generation of doctors who were truly all rounders and pillars of society, is now a rare gem of a bygone era.

I will send your regards to Dr Alice when we next meet.

Dr Wong Yin Onn, is a senior General Practitioner and Professor of Family Practice, Monash Univerisity Medical School, Johor Bharu