On a sexual health mission

Datuk Dr Narimah Awin has seen the impact of religion on health--both positive and negative.

TO this day, Datuk Dr Narimah Awin remembers a woman who died while delivering her 13th child in Terengganu in the 1980s.

While a kampung midwife was delivering the baby, the woman had complications. The government midwife was called and she wanted to send the dying woman to the hospital, but “her husband said we had to allow her the privilege of dying as a syahid (martyr),” recalls Narimah, who was serving as senior medical officer of Health for the Kuala Terengganu district then.