Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali died on the morning of 28 September at the National Heart Institute in Kuala Lumpur, at about 9:25. She was 100. Her son confirmed the death.
She is best known as the wife of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, who was prime minister from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020. But she was a physician first, one of the earliest Malay women to qualify as a doctor in Malaya, and she was the first prime minister’s wife in Malaysia to hold a professional career.
Medicine before the title
Born on 12 July 1926 in Kampung Jawa, Klang, she was the sixth of ten children. When Japan began bombing Malaya in December 1941 she had just sat her Senior Cambridge examinations. During the occupation she learned to cook and play the violin, and she and her sisters sang on the radio as the “Ali Sisters.” She had wanted to be a journalist. The illness and disease she saw around her during the war pushed her toward medicine.
She enrolled at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore, the only Malay woman in her cohort. It was there she met Mahathir. She graduated in 1955, did her housemanship at Kuala Lumpur General Hospital and joined the government health service.
The firsts came quickly. In 1965 she became the first woman appointed a medical officer in the Maternal and Child Health Department. In 1974 she became the first woman appointed State Maternal and Child Health Officer in Kedah, where, during her tenure, the infant mortality rate fell from 75 per 1,000 to 6 per 1,000. She also studied at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in 1966 and wrote on breastfeeding, pregnancy and childbirth, and traditional health practices. She retired from government service in 1979 and lectured at the University of Malaya’s Faculty of Dentistry until 1981.
First lady with a platform
She married Mahathir in August 1956 and kept working while raising seven children, four of their own and three adopted. In the years she was first lady she pressed for maternal and child health, family planning, drug abuse prevention, rural women’s development and adult literacy. She chaired the Malaysian Girl Guides Association and the Kedah Family Planning Association, and served as the first chancellor of Multimedia University from 1997 to 2012.
In September 1995 she led Malaysia’s delegation to the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. In March 2000 she led a five-day goodwill mission to Iraq to see how economic sanctions were affecting women and children, bringing medical supplies. The trip included a brief meeting with President Saddam Hussein, a meeting she later said was kept secret even from her security team and from Mahathir. Mahathir defended it as an expression of sympathy for the Iraqi people.
She won a UNIFEM Anniversary Award in Beijing. In 2003 she received the Seri Setia Mahkota Malaysia, which carries the title “Tun.” In 2019 the Asian Strategy and Leadership Institute named her Ibu Negara, Mother of the Nation.
Even in her last years she stayed visible, urging COVID-19 vaccination during the pandemic and playing the violin at public events after turning 100. She leaves seven children, 18 grandchildren and one great-grandchild, and a husband of 70 years. A state funeral was held, and she was laid to rest in Putrajaya.
Sources
- Siti Hasmah – Wikipedia
- Remembering Tun Dr Hasmah: 6 Facts About Malaysia's Former First Lady Who Passed Away Today
