A century of service: remembering the life and legacy of Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali

In her 2016 memoir, My Name is Hasmah, she recalled that medical school was far from easy. Physics and Chemistry were subjects she had never studied before, while laboratory work presented its own challenges. “I always got the colours wrong where chemical reactions were concerned, so much so they even tested me for colour-blindness the first year,” she wrote.

Her future husband, then a fellow medical student, became an important source of support during her studies. “And then came my hero Mahathir,” she recalled, describing him as “my knight in shining armour” who stepped in to help her learn and pass her examinations.

After graduating and marrying Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in 1956, Dr Siti Hasmah moved to Alor Setar, where she served as a medical officer between 1956 and 1962. The transition from Selangor to rural Kedah was challenging. “In the beginning, the people there were very suspicious of me,” she recalled. “They didn’t understand my language and I didn’t understand theirs.”

An interpreter helped initially, but she gradually earned the trust of the communities she served. Of this, she later said: “One of my proudest achievements was when the Kedahans accepted this Selangor girl.”

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From the Sultan to the tok penghulu and bidan, she said, they came to accept her “as one of them and as someone with the objective of changing their lives for the better.”

In 1965, she became the first woman Medical Officer in Kedah’s Maternal and Child Health Department and Principal of the Rural Health Training School in Jitra. In 1974, she became the state’s first woman Maternal and Child Health Officer, before moving to the Institute for Public Health in Bangsar.

Her work extended beyond the clinic. She organised rural health programmes promoting hygiene, healthier living and childhood immunisation, while working with traditional healers, midwives and local women to address unsafe practices surrounding childbirth and newborn care.

Family planning was another important part of her work, requiring patience and communication in communities where misconceptions and cultural sensitivities could make the subject difficult to discuss. She retired from government service in 1979 and subsequently taught at the University of Malaya’s Faculty of Dentistry until 1981.

When Tun Dr Mahathir became Prime Minister in 1981, Dr Siti Hasmah entered a new chapter as Malaysia’s First Lady. But her interests remained closely tied to the causes that had shaped her medical career, including women’s welfare, family planning, education, literacy and drug-abuse prevention.

She was also involved in BAKTI, a welfare organisation comprising the wives of ministers and speakers, helping establish initiatives in education, sports and community outreach.

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There was a lighter side to her public life, too. A keen badminton player, she continued playing competitively until the age of 75.

Her international engagements gave her another perspective on Malaysia’s development. She participated in the First Ladies Summit for the Economic Advancement of Rural Women in Geneva in 1992 and, in 1995, led Malaysia’s delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

For all the public roles she assumed, Dr Siti Hasmah’s own account of her life placed family at its centre. “The best chapter in my life is marrying my husband and having my children, of course,” she said.

Her marriage to Mahathir, she recalled, was built on “love and trust”, adding with characteristic humour that the key to a good relationship was “love and fresh air”. She also remembered a moment when Mahathir suffered his first heart attack. Having taken her husband to hospital, she only realised the full significance of the situation when someone reminded her to inform the Deputy Prime Minister and their family.

“That’s when I realised I was also taking the Prime Minister to the hospital.”

Published to mark her 90th birthday, My Name is Hasmah offered an intimate account of a life that had often been seen through the lens of her husband’s political career. She hoped it would particularly resonate with women, touching on “loyalty to husband and family; and career”.

Dr Siti Hasmah received numerous honours, including the Kazue McLaren Award from the Asia Pacific Consortium for Public Health and honorary doctorates from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland and Indiana University. In 2003, she was conferred the federal title of Tun.

Yet she was reluctant to speak of her legacy in grand terms. “I don’t have any legacy to leave behind,” she said, instead hoping that her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren would carry forward the values taught by their parents and grandparents.

Her own parents had instilled in her “good moral values, honesty, respect and caring for others”. She believed in continuing to learn, adapting to a changing world and, perhaps most importantly, remaining engaged with people.

Young mothers remained particular favourites, and she would ask them about their children and whether they had been vaccinated, reflecting the maternal and child-health concerns that had defined her career decades earlier.

Her advice for a long life was characteristically simple: “You have to have a happy mind and happy attitude.”

From the rural clinics of Kedah to the international stage, Tun Dr Siti Hasmah spent a lifetime in service. A pioneering doctor, advocate for women and children, mother and public figure, her influence was built not only through the positions she held, but through the people she reached. She once called her years in public health her “happiest days”. That is the most fitting measure of her life: that at its heart, despite all the titles and responsibilities that followed, she remained a doctor who found fulfilment in caring for others.

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