By June Cheong
He is fastidious to a fault now, Dr Leong Hoe Name (right) always dons a face mask at work when seeing patients with coughs and runny noses.
The consultant infectious diseases physician at Singapore General Hospital constantly washes his hands, refrains from wearing a tie and rolls up his long-sleeved shirts when seeing patients. Such items can harbour germs and bacteria.
He even scolds junior doctors if he finds them not being strict with their hand hygiene in the hospital.
His fastidiousness is understandable. Dr Leong, 37, had a close brush with severe acquired respiratory syndrome (Sars) in 2003.
That year Dr Leong made the news when, on his way home from a medical conference in New York, he was taken off his flight in Frankfurt and quarantined there for 2½ weeks.
His paediatrician wife, Dr Lim Hong Huay, now 35, and her mother, Madam Koh Soo Gue, now 66, were on that flight too. Dr Lim was then three months pregnant with their daughter, Marianne.
As Dr Leong lay in an isolation ward at Frankfurt University Hospital, not only was her worried that he might have spread Sars to his family – and to his unborn child – he was also distressed that he might die.
He said: “There were moments when I thought I would die. My concerns were for my wife and unborn child and how they were going to carry on.”
Before he left for New York, Dr Leong had attended to Singapore’s first Sars patient at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, where he was on attachment for four days.
Six days later, he came down with fever and body aches. He said: “I had no idea then what it was expect that it was a viral illness. The term Sars wasn’t even coined then.”
Because he seemed to have recovered from the fever within two days, he left for the medical conference. But while he was in New York, he fell ill again and consulted a physician there, who diagnosed him with pneumonia.
He decided to return to Singapore “in case of complications of pneumonia” but by then experts had become aware of Sars and he and his family were stopped and quarantined in Frankfurt.
The day after Dr Leong landed in Frankfurt, the World Health Organisation released news of the Sars virus. He remained in quarantine and had a battery of blood and diagnostic tests every day.
He said: “I was helpless and at the mercy of the infection. I could do nothing except to wait it out.”
After 10 days, Dr Leong’s fever subsided. His mother-in-law had recovered by then and his wife pulled through one week later.
Dr Leong’s near-brush with death brought his family closer and also converted him to Christianity.
Dr Lim, who was already a Christian, asked the hospital staff for an English-language bible for Dr Leong to read while he lay in bed.
He said with a laugh: “While recovering, I had nothing else except German TV.”
What did the disease teach him? Dr Leong said: “The most important lesson is the fragility of life.”
That, and strict hand hygiene both inside and outside of the hospital, is what Dr Leong swears by.
He said: “I wash my hands with hand sanitizer five times throughout a patient consultant. Good infection control practices in hospital are very important.
“This keeps me free of germs, be they multi-resistant bacteria or life threatening viruses. And they keep my family safe.”
Email: junec@sph.com.sg
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