In Memoriam: Professor Moira Mo Wah Chan-Yeung (1939-2024)

The Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences Society mourns the passing on September 6, 2024 of Dr Moira Mo Wah Chan-Yeung, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, University of British Columbia and Honorary Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, an active member and a staunch supporter of the research, education and archival work of the Society.

Chan Mo Wah, as she was known to her friends and colleagues in Hong Kong, was a star graduate of Diocesan Girls School and a distinguished graduate of the medical faculty of the University of Hong Kong. After a short period of clinical training in the University Medical Unit at Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong and further studies in the United Kingdom, she embarked on a productive medical teaching and research career at the University of British Columbia medical school in Vancouver, B.C., dedicating herself to the study and advancing knowledge in the field of asthma, especially as related to occupational exposures, which not only earned her prestigious awards but more significantly led to the recognition of and government action for occupational asthma in Canada.

After retiring from active service in Canada, she returned to Hong Kong and continued to contribute to teaching, mentorship and research in the University Medical Unit, a department to which she had cherished a fond memory and a strong sense of belonging.

It was during her second working life in Hong Kong that she was associated with our Society and contributed a significant amount of time and effort to help with making improvements to its Library collection and to conduct research into medical history in Hong Kong, publishing several important works relating to the city’s developments in public health and medical services and chronicling notable medical personalities in the local community, some if not all of which now grace the bookstore in our Museum. All these, one should add, were done concurrently with her other significant works including, and not limited to, the history of Diocesan Boys’ and Girls’ Schools and biographies of non-medical personalities, notably the retired Anglican Bishop Ronald O. Hall.

As a person and a friend, she was always kind and helpful and her low-profile, gently delivered advice and observations were at no time irrelevant to those who received them. Her commitment and dedication to the work at hand are inspirational. Her passing is a great loss to the medical community and to our Society in Hong Kong. She will be sadly missed by her friends and associates. The Society joins many others in Hong Kong and abroad to send our deepest sympathies to her husband, Dr David Po Him Yeung, and their family.