Despite receiving such an honour, the co-founder of the ROSE Foundation remains a humble doctor, as was evidenced when she chatted with FMT recently about her remarkable journey.
According to Woo, the path she took to become a doctor was not one she initially embraced. “I sort of stumbled into it,” she admitted.
“I was not an ambitious person growing up. I was, in fact, the neighbourhood tomboy on a skateboard and a BMX!”
At the time, Woo considered studying law, just as her friends were. What’s more, studying medicine was financially unfeasible then.
Upon completing her A-levels though, Woo’s father’s investments paid off and he asked if she wished to study medicine.
“As with most Asian parents, they either want you to be an accountant, a doctor or an engineer,” she recalled, laughing. So off to med school she went, studying at Trinity College Dublin.
While there, she saw how dedicated gynaecologists were in their field of work, and was inspired to follow in their footsteps.
“I’ve never seen compassion shown among surgeons the way I did when I was a student there,” she told FMT, adding that it was then that she decided to specialise in gynaecology.
“People are my passion. You must always have people in mind. Being kind, that’s what’s central to healthcare.”
Woo returned to Malaysia in 2010, and started her service in Universiti Hospital where she continues to serve to this day.
On the Rachel Pearline Award, Woo said she was surprised to be nominated, more so to win the award. “I was very humbled because I had seen who the previous winners were,” she said, adding that as the first Southeast Asian award recipient, she was happy that the work of Malaysians and other Asians was receiving rightful global recognition.
Previous winners were “global impactors” who left a mark on the medical field, and Woo’s mark is one focused on the elimination of cervical cancer.
“Cervical cancer is one of the more common female cancers in Malaysia, the second-most common cancer in females under the age of 45.”
“But it is also the only cancer in history that we can actually eliminate in our lifetime,” she promised, saying that there are measures that can be implemented to ensure this.
What needs to be done? Well, the first step has already been taken and implemented well – Malaysia’s HPV vaccination programme.
Describing the programme as “superb”, she added: “Malaysia is one of the few countries to have started this programme in schools, in 2010.”
However, the second step is tougher. It requires adult women to go for cervical cancer screening, which is not something everyone can or wants to do. Woo said that many women dislike the hassle of going to a hospital for screening via pap smear, which is hardly a comfortable process.
Due to this, most women only go for testing when ill, with only a small portion going for regular screenings voluntarily. “On average, a woman needs to go for testing 15 times in her lifetime.”
Thus, HPV testing is important as most cervical cancer cases can be attributed to HPV infection. And this is where Programme ROSE becomes crucial.
An abbreviation for ‘Removing Obstacles to Cervical Screening’, the programme allows participants to easily and comfortably take swabs of their vaginal cells by themselves in the privacy of their homes, in a procedure similar to Covid-19 PCR tests.
The swabs are then sent for testing, with results being very accurate these days. “You only need to do it twice in your lifetime,” said Woo.
If the results are positive, the participants are linked to a call centre, which will help them every step of the way. “I understand, coming to hospital is a very scary experience.”
Programme ROSE is thus aimed at allowing women from underprivileged communities to undergo HPV testing, without the problems faced when visiting a hospital.
“In Programme ROSE, we go to a community and tell women: ‘You don’t need to go to busy clinics any more. We can follow up with you and we have a mechanism to do this.’”
This measure, if implemented nationwide via pharmacies and private GP clinics, will also help in reducing the heavy burden borne by hospitals.
Woo had a gentle reminder: “Male or female, we should remember why we’re in medicine: To care for patients. The reason behind you being in medicine should be simple. It’s to treat every person who we look after as if they are our own family members,” she said.
“You want the best for your family. This is what needs to come back into the heart of medicine.”