He would be 134 years old today, if he were still alive. But of course, he is not. He was born in China Street, George Town, Penang on 10 March 1879 and he died in Chor Sin Kheng Road, Ayer Itam, Penang on 21 January 1960.
The 81 years of his life were momentous. He is hardly recognised in the land of his birth but Dr Wu Lien-Teh was possibly the greatest Malayan in the history of this country. Having saved the world from the bubonic plague that had threatened to spread outwards from northern China, he went very close to winning the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1935.
To mark this special day, The Dr Wu Lien-Teh Society, Penang held a committee meeting at the Penang Medical College to map out various strategies that will culminate with next year's Penang Conference on Global Health, inspired by the life and work of the good doctor himself.
My other posts on Dr Wu Lien-Teh appears here.
It should be pneumonic plague instead of bubonic plague as per “A Treatise on Pneumonic Plague" compiled by Dr Wu himself.
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