On 17 February 2015 the UNU International Institute for Global Health and the National University of Malaysia Medical Faculty, in conjunction with the Dr. Wu Lien-Teh Society, will co-host the 2015 Dr. Wu Lien-Teh Lecture: Healthy People, Healthy Communities and a Healthy Planet: A Personal Journey, presented by Professor Trevor Hancock.
The lecture will reflect on Prof. Hancock’s 40-year personal journey through medicine, health and “understanding what keeps people healthy and what makes them sick, and acting on that understanding”. The lecture will look at what Prof. Hancock’s experience means for the practice of public health and medicine as the world confronts “the greatest threat to human health we have ever faced — ourselves and the all too powerful and pervasive technological civilization we have created”.
For more information, please see the event flyer in the Related Files tab
Advance registration is required. For seating and catering purposes please confirm your attendance by sending a message to iigh-info@unu.edu.
09:30
10:00
11:30
Professor Trevor Hancock is a public health physician and Professor and Senior Scholar at the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria. He has a long-standing interest in health and the environment, the links between health and sustainable development, and the ecological determinants of health. Trevor is currently leading a major report for the Canadian Public Health Association on the health implications of global ecological change. He has played a key role in founding several environment-focused organizations, including the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care.
Dr. Wu Lien-Teh (1879–1960) was a global medical icon. Born in Penang, Malaysia, Wu Lien-Teh was a student of the Penang Free School (one of the oldest English medium schools in the region) and later the first Malaysian and the top medical student at the University of Cambridge where he also obtained a PhD. Dr. Wu was among the founders of The Anti-Opium Society and worked at the prestigious Institute of Medical Research in Kuala Lumpur where there is a gallery about his pioneering work.
In 1910, Dr. Wu moved to China where, in the northeast, he led the public health response to a major epidemic of pneumonic plague. Dr. Wu’s heroic work controlled the epidemic which could have devastated China. He is now honoured as The Plague Fighter and there is a museum in the city of Harbin devoted to him. Dr. Wu went on to establish many hospitals and medical schools in China. In 1932, he authored the classic History of Chinese Medicine. Dr Wu was the founding president of the Chinese Medical Association (1916–1920). Dr. Wu was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1935, the first from Malaysia and the region. He returned to Malaysia in 1937 and lived in Ipoh for over two decades, continuing his medical and civic work. When he died in 1960 in Penang, The Times of London wrote “the world of medicine has lost a heroic and almost legendary figure”. In the British Medical Journal, Sir Philip Manson-Bahr stated the name of Dr Wu Lien-Teh “flashed forth as a monument of devotion and courage”.
Healthy People, Healthy Communities and a Healthy Planet: A Personal Journey (609.3 KB PDF)
UKM Medical Centre Auditorium
Jalan Yaacob Latif, Bandar Tun Razak
Cheras, 56000
Kuala Lumpur
iigh-info@unu.edu