Cover Photo: Imran Sulaiman
Photo: Imran Sulaiman
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Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur’s Dr Premitha Damodaran envisions a Malaysia that’s better prepared to address women’s health issues
Premitha Damodaran’s day starts at 5.30am. Having some time to herself in the morning helps her cope with her workload later in the day as a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Pantai Hospital Kuala Lumpur.
“Along the way I’ve come to understand that I thrive on challenges because they keep my mind going,” laughs the 59-year-old. “It’s like my son always says, I like to cari pasal.”
Throughout her career, challenges have seemed to go hand-in-hand with her achievements. In medical school, she faced an all-time low when she failed her final year examinations, only to ace them six months later. Previously, she was head of Pantai Hospital’s obstetrics and gynaecology department for two years and she served as the chair of its breast-feeding committee, spearheading a movement to make it the first breast feeding-friendly private hospital in Malaysia.
Above Photo: Imran Sulaiman/Tatler Malaysia
Photo: Imran Sulaiman/Tatler Malaysia
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As a fresh graduate, she was tasked by her mentor to start a menopause clinic at Universiti Malaya Hospital. “Women loved the idea of the clinic. They loved being able to come in and talk about hormone changes and get advice on what to do. It was stressful, but I enjoyed the fact that I was helping other women while learning to understand what changes I was going through myself,” Damodaran says.
Around this time, she became fascinated with the topics of hormone replacement therapy and hormone imbalances in women. At a time when menopausal health was relatively under-discussed, Damodaran devoted a great deal of her career to studying the onset of medical conditions like diabetes, blood pressure, osteoporosis and more in menopausal women as well as the perceptions and attitudes surrounding menopause in Malaysia. She co-authored over 20 studies that have been published in journals like The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research and Singapore Medical Journal.
Above Women encounter more health challenges during menopause and doctors must be better prepared for that (Photo: Getty)
Women encounter more health challenges during menopause and doctors must be better prepared for that (Photo: Getty)
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“Many women suffer a lot from menopausal changes that they can’t cope with,” she says. “We’ve learnt so much about hormone therapy in the last 20 years, the different types of treatment for women, who to use it on, and how to monitor them. But it’s not as simple as giving a patient a Panadol for a headache. It involves discussion, doctors will have to tweak doses and be more confident in giving patients the correct type of hormone therapy. It had been on my mind for many years to work on some form of guidelines that could help doctors in this field and in 2019, I gathered a group of like-minded individuals to start it.”
Through the pandemic and other challenges along the way, Damodaran and her team at the Obstetrical and Gynaecology Society of Malaysia, the Malaysian Menopause Society and the College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology worked closely with the Malaysian Ministry of Health to produce a comprehensive set of clinical practice guidelines for menopause management in Malaysia, officially launching them in July 2022.
“There was a lot of writing and rewriting involved, " she recalls. "Every time we thought of quitting the project, Dr Amin from the Ministry of Health would tell me, ‘No, you can do this. I’ll help you.’ We couldn’t have done it without help from people like him. I think the Ministry of Health knew that this was important for the nation.”
Above Photo: College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists/Facebook
Photo: College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists/Facebook
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From understanding the effects of hormone therapy on hot flushes and sleep disturbances to knowing how often to monitor patients, the clinical practice guidelines are a pioneering effort to improve the readiness of Malaysia’s healthcare system for the health needs of women during menopause.
“The average life span of a woman in Malaysia is 78 years old at this point. In a room of 100 women, 50 of them will likely live beyond 78. But how healthy will she be at that age? What happens when she loses her estrogen levels and develops problems like blood pressure, heart disease or osteoporosis later in life? If we can look at a woman’s life before all this happens and prepare her for these changes, she could change things for the better and as doctors, we can help her understand that process.”
Damodaran’s hopes are that the clinical practice guidelines will be especially helpful for hospitals and clinics in remote or rural communities in Malaysia. While the guidelines are a step in the right direction, she believes the country’s healthcare system has a long way to go to be more proactive in anticipating and addressing women’s health needs.
Above Photo: Unsplash
Photo: Unsplash
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“At some point, I also want to approach insurance companies about the fact that they don’t cover menopausal health issues and hormone therapy because they think it’s too risky," she says. "Why is it that overseas insurance companies cover menopausal health, but not local ones? Many of these companies don’t see menopausal health problems as actual illnesses and I’m hoping to change that perception with the clinical practice guidelines.”
No stranger to tackling a daunting task before her, Damodaran acknowledges that widespread changes like these will take time. “I have big dreams, but I’ll do it step by step. Whether I’ll succeed or not, I don’t know. But I have to start somewhere.”
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Previously contributing to Esquire Malaysia, Expat Lifestyle and Newsweek, Tania oversees digital stories across Tatler’s key content pillars, also leading the Front & Female platform exploring issues and topics affecting women today.
