lumen health
Compassion and good humour drive forward-thinking paediatrician
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The scattering of toys on his desk and the bright-red teddy bear curtains draped in his office say two things about one of Asia’s most respected paediatricians. |
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Dr Sam Abraham: all-encompassing compassion |
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First, he understands children, and second, his expertise and professionalism come with warmth, caring and good humour.
The man is Datuk Dr Sam Abraham, a University of Adelaide medical graduate who has become one of the most highly respected medical practitioners in Malaysia.
The former Colombo Plan scholar graduated from the university in 1959, and in 1995 received the Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of “profound and sustained services to the health of the children of the world”.
Dr Abraham has become known in Asia, Britain and Australia for his skill and his all-encompassing compassion for children, particularly those who traditionally have not received a high level of care.
When he returned to his home country in 1959 after studying at the University of Adelaide, there were only one or two Malaysians trained in paediatrics.
“Paediatrics was my main interest at that time because infant mortality was high,” Dr Abraham says.
The quality of life for Malaysian children has dramatically improved over the course of his 40-year-plus career. One area to which he still devotes much of his time is the care of physically and mentally disabled children.
Dr Abraham is chairman of a non-government organisation called Dignity in Services, which is an advocacy and support group for disabled children.
“One of the things that Dignity in Services is doing is looking at the curriculum of schools, because the curriculum for children with learning disorders and disabilities needs to be revised,” he says.
“Everyone is going for the normal child, the smart child, the gifted child, but to me a gifted child is a special child—they’re special, they need help, especially those who are spastic, those who are autistic, dyslexic. And at the moment they’re all being lumped into the one school situation, but I think we need to specialise.”
Malaysia traditionally has not been an easy country for children with disabilities to grow up in, but Dr Abraham says the views of Malaysians have changed over the years. The Malaysian government recently passed a bill to reserve 10% of jobs for disabled groups, so that they can have a chance of job opportunities. This is just one in a number of steps that allow disabled people to have more independent lives, Dr Abraham says.
His forward-thinking views on the care of disabled children developed while a student in Australia.
“I’m very grateful to have been in Australia to study because one of the things in the medical curriculum in Adelaide was to visit homes of disabled children, like the Spastic Centre. The children in Adelaide had a beautiful home for the disabled children, and education was especially good.
“The Apex Club in Australia, of which I was a member, gave me a wonderful opportunity of travelling all over Australia and seeing the kind of projects that the Australians were doing for children, looking after families, providing clothing for families, for children who were disabled.
“So when I got back to Malaysia in ‘59, with a group of Apex Club members in Kuala Lumpur we started the Spastic Children’s Centre, which I think was tremendous. Even at that time we were quite keen on having proper facilities for the disabled— toilets and ramps, making sure they could be mobile and move around.”
Even with great advances in the last 40 years, Dr Abraham says there is still much to be done.
“A lot depends on education, especially of the parents,” he says. “We’ve had children being locked in, tied up, there’ve been newspaper reports of a boy being chained up… some religious groups think there’s a devil, an evil spirit in them or something. But it’s a question of education and support, it’s telling them that these children have a chance, they have a role, they have a place in society, and they also have human rights,” he says.
Story David Ellis
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