Dr Wu Lien-Teh is Roy Ng's great uncle.

 

Dr Wu Lien-teh inspired me to pursue my profession as the first Cambridge-trained Chinese doctor and his distinguished career as a physician, public health practitioner, social activist, Noble prize nominee in Medicine, and a gentleman of honour and humility.

He has continued to inspire me during SARS, Nipah, H1N1 and COVID-19 pandemic from the knowledge that he successfully brought the 1910-11 pneumonic plague in Manchuria under control in four months by his diplomatic negotiations with the Chinese and neighbouring governments to stop the railways, lockdown, isolate, quarantine, mass cremate instead of bury and wearing of the Wu mask.

At my Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology frontline of this Pandemic, we have prioritised our manpower, services and beds by cancelling non-essential leave, postponed non-urgent sub-specialty services apart from Obstetrics, Gynaecologic Oncology, and emergencies. We protect our team with the necessary PPE, strict restriction of movement of heathcare professionals (HCPs) in our own and different departments and hospitals; split teams working in different areas in daily and weekly shifts with adequate rest. HCPs are required to submit electronically their twice daily temperatures, illnesses, quarantine, medical leave daily. Medical leave for respiratory symptoms is a compulsory 5-days; febrile and/or symptomatic staff would have their RT-PCR nasopharyngeal swabs.

We have commenced telemedicine, tele-education and telecommunication.

Lessons learnt from Dr Wu include: Circuit Breaker (Partial lockdown) apart from the 10 essential services from April 7 to June 1, 2020, after the surge of COVID-19 cases in foreign workers dormitories: widespread targeted testing of the latter; deisolating the positive but asymptomatic or midly symptomatic workers to different non-hospital facilities; 14-day quarantine, contact tracing and monitoring of negative patients in their dormitories. Mandatory wearing of face masks by all when leaving their homes since 4 April, 2020.

Innovations from our Government: Daily update of COVID-19 infections and advisories on mass and social media. Trace Together App for contact tracing.

If I could, I would mandate the public to wear a face mask when in public from the beginning of today’s Pandemic on 23 January 2020 (first case in Singapore), instead of the WHO’s advice of wearing a mask only when unwell, until a surge of new cases.

 

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