Penang-born medical icon's contributions to be recognised

GEORGE TOWN: Leaders in the medical field will get together to celebrate the legacy of epidemiologist Dr Wu Lien-Teh (pic), who invented a medical face mask that became the N95 respirator.

The inaugural Dr Wu Lien-Teh International Conference on April 28 will see experts discussing his contributions to the prevention of communicable diseases.

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To be chaired by the president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in China, Prof Dr Wang Chen, the conference is aimed at promoting the legacy of Dr Wu and sharing knowledge on how to battle the Covid-19 pandemic by drawing from the measures he adopted when combating the Manchurian plague.

The Penang-born Dr Wu, who died in 1960 at the age of 80, was widely honoured for his work in public health and medical research, in particular epidemiology, in tackling the Manchurian plague from 1910 to 1911.

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The pneumonic plague that occurred mainly in Manchuria (now most often associated with the three Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning) killed 60,000 people, stimulating a multinational medical response and the wearing of the first personal protective equipment.

Dr Wu is credited with the invention of the Wu medical face mask that became the N95. He was the first ethnic Chinese to study at Cambridge University and the first Malaysian to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine.

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He was an old boy of the Penang Free School where a house is named after him.

Among the speakers that would be at the April 28 online conference are Dr Wu’s great-granddaughter, Harvard Medical School’s Emergency Medicine Assoc Prof Dr Shan Woo Liu, and great-grandniece Dr Yvonne Ho, who is the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists board director.

Besides Dr Shan and Dr Ho, the other speakers include Harbin Medical University, Wu Lien-Teh Institute vice-director Prof Dr Zhang Fengmin, Malaysia Institute for Medical Research special resource centre head Dr Balvinder Singh Gill, and John Hopkins Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine resident physician Dr Kyle Renard Burton.

It is organised by the Dr Wu Lien-Teh Education Society, Malaysia, and Wu Lien-Teh Institute, Harbin Medical University, China, a university founded by Dr Wu.

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Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin will be opening the conference. Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia Ouyang Yujing will be among those at the opening ceremony.

The event is held to commemorate the 111th anniversary of the International Plague Conference, which was held between April 3 and 28, 1911, in Shenyang, China.

There will be two sessions; one on the life and history of Dr Wu and the other on lessons from the Manchurian plague in 1910 on the prevention of communicable diseases.

Those interested in attending the webinar on April 28 from 1pm to 3pm (Malaysian time) can register at https://bit.ly/3vacuLs.