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MEDICAL EXCELLENCE AWARDS
Last night, the Health Ministry gave out National Medical Excellence Awards to the best doctors here in four categories: Outstanding Mentors, Doctors, Doctors in Research and Teams. The winners were judged on their contributions to science and society and to patient safety and care.
BEING a great medical researcher requires compassion, says Professor Yap Hui Kim (right), 53, winner of the National Outstanding Clinician Award.
It was that desire to help others that led her to become one of the leading researchers into childhood kidney diseases.
She traced her career back to a pivotal moment over two decades ago. In 1985, she could have cut her ties to Singapore when she was offered a position as a faculty member of the American university where she trained.
"I just sat down and thought hard about it, and I knew I still wanted to do what I set out to when I left Singapore: set up a renal programme for children."
Just 30 years ago, almost every child in Singapore with kidney failure died from the condition.
Prof Yap pioneered paediatric nephrology - the diagnosis, treatment and care of kidney disease in children - setting up the National Paediatric Renal Replacement Programme in 1988. Now, no child here dies for lack of treatment facilities and over 80 per cent reach adulthood, she said.
She is now head and senior consultant of paediatric nephrology, immunology and urology at the Children's Medical Institute at the National University Hospital. She is also professor at the paediatrics department of the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore.
But Prof Yap said her work was far from done and more could be done to improve the lives of children with kidney failure.
"We need...to give them the quality of life to say we've succeeded."
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