#Kwan Kew Lai

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Smorgasbord Book Reviews - October Round Up - Kwan Kew Lai, Chris Hall, D.L. Finn, Jan Sikes, Jacqui Murray, Dan Antion

Smorgasbord Book Reviews – October Round Up – Kwan Kew Lai, Chris Hall, D.L. Finn, Jan Sikes, Jacqui Murray, Dan Antion

Welcome to the round up of my reviews during October and a very enjoyable reading month. My review for The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly October 1st 2022 The author has already published two memoirs about her extraordinary global career in medicine and humanitarian work – Lest We Forget: A Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak and Into Africa, Out of Academia: A…

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Smorgasbord Book Reviews - October Round Up - Kwan Kew Lai, Chris Hall, D.L. Finn, Jan Sikes, Jacqui Murray, Dan Antion

Smorgasbord Book Reviews – October Round Up – Kwan Kew Lai, Chris Hall, D.L. Finn, Jan Sikes, Jacqui Murray, Dan Antion

Welcome to the round up of my reviews during October and a very enjoyable reading month. My review for The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly October 1st 2022 The author has already published two memoirs about her extraordinary global career in medicine and humanitarian work – Lest We Forget: A Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak and Into Africa, Out of Academia: A…

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New book out by Kwan Kew Lai ’74 (@KwanKew)! INTO AFRICA, OUT OF ACADEMIA: A DOCTOR’S MEMOIR

Kwan Kew Lai ’74, who WU interviewed in summer 2019, has a new book out: Into Africa, Out of Academia: A Doctor’s Memoir.

In 2006, Kwan Kew Lai left her full-time position as a professor in the United States to provide medical humanitarian aid to the remote villages and the war-torn areas of Africa. This memoir follows her experiences from 2006 to 2013 as she provided care during the HIV/AIDs epidemics, after natural disasters, and as a relief doctor in refugee camps in Kenya, Libya, Uganda and in South Sudan, where civil war virtually wiped out all existing healthcare facilities.

Throughout her memoir, Lai recounts intimate encounters with refugees and internally displaced people in camps and in hospitals with limited resources, telling tales of their resilience, unflinching courage, and survival through extreme hardship. Her writing provides insight into communities and transports readers to heart-achingly beautiful parts of Africa not frequented by the usual travelers. This is a deeply personal account of the huge disparities in the healthcare system of our “global village” and is a call to action for readers to understand the interconnectedness of the modern world, the needs of less developed neighbors, and the shortcomings of their healthcare systems.

Order the book here!

Belmont Books is also having a virtual event at 7 pm (EST) on January 19, 2021. Save the date! 

Join us as as we welcome back Dr. Kwan Kew Lai, to discuss her latest book, Into Africa, Out of Academia: A Doctor's Memoir, with Dr. Nahreen Ahmed. Click here to register for this Zoom webinar.

About Into Africa, Out of Academia:

In 2006, Kwan Kew Lai left her full-time position as a professor in the United States to provide medical humanitarian aid to the remote villages and the war-torn areas of Africa. This memoir follows her experiences from 2006 to 2013 as she provided care during the HIV/AIDs epidemics, after natural disasters, and as a relief doctor in refugee camps in Kenya, Libya, Uganda and in South Sudan, where civil war virtually wiped out all existing healthcare facilities.

Throughout her memoir, Lai recounts intimate encounters with refugees and internally displaced people in camps and in hospitals with limited resources, telling tales of their resilience, unflinching courage, and survival through extreme hardship. Her writing provides insight into communities and transports readers to heart-achingly beautiful parts of Africa not frequented by the usual travelers. This is a deeply personal account of the huge disparities in the healthcare system of our "global village" and is a call to action for readers to understand the interconnectedness of the modern world, the needs of less developed neighbors, and the shortcomings of their healthcare systems.

Originally from Penang, Malaysia, Kwan Kew Lai came to the United States after receiving a full scholarship to attend Wellesley. “Without that open door I would not have gone on to become a doctor,” Lai wrote in her Doctors Without Borders bio.

In 2006, after volunteering in the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Lai left her position as a Professor of Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and worked part-time as a clinician, while dedicating her time to humanitarian work. Lai volunteered in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Malawi and provided earthquake relief in Haiti, Nepal, drought and famine relief at the Kenyan and Somalian border, hurricane relief in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and the gulf coasts. She worked with refugees of the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Syria in Moria camp of Lesvos in Greece, and the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, in war-torn Libya and Yemen. She treated Ebola patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone. During the peak of the COVID pandemic, she volunteered at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, New York and on St. Croix of the US Virgin Islands.

Into Africa, Out of Academia: A Doctor's Memoir is about her experiences in Africa. Her book debut, Lest We Forget: A Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak was published in 2018. Lai is a resident of Belmont.

Dr. Nahreen Ahmed is originally from the Greater Philadelphia area. She attended DrexelUniversity College of Medicine and subsequently went on to residency at theUniversity of Illinois in Chicago where she concomitantly completed her MastersDegree in Public Health, and was also invited to stay on for a Chief Residency.

She went on to pursue a fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical care atNYU/Bellevue, and subsequently joined the faculty at the Hospital of theUniversity of Pennsylvania where she is currently an Assistant Professor inClinical Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care as well as aPenn Center for Global Health Scholar.

She launched her Global Health Career byfounding the Bangladesh Ultrasound Initiative, a training program for criticalcare physicians in Dhaka, Bangladesh and then proceeded to become the Head of Ultrasound for two non-profits MedGlobal and Bridge to Health with whom she hasworked to bring Ultrasound training, and medical care to crisis zones such asYemen, Sierra Leone, Rohingya Refugee Camps as well as low resource hospitalsin Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

Dr. Ahmed has a strong belief in capacity building with the aide of technology and telecommunications and that the key to sustainability in global medicine is via medical education and a hands-ontraining approach which empowers local clinicians.

Here are the links to the event pages: Lai/Ahmed website page Lai/Ahmed Facebook page

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Wellesley Writes It: Dr. Kwan Kew Lai

Wellesley Writes It: Dr. Kwan Kew Lai

In my second interview since I started back editing for Wellesley Underground as their Wellesley Writes It editor, I corresponded with Dr. Kwan Kew Lai, Wellesley ’74 and author of Lest We Forget: One Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak.

Here’s the beginning of the interview:

Kwan Kew Lai ’74, M.D., D.M.D., is an infectious disease specialist who has volunteered her…

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U.S. Boosts Ebola Training of Health Workers

ANNISTON, Ala.—Coverd hed ta toe n' a protectif' yalla suit, apern, gloves, hood, goggles an' boots, Kwun Kew Lai took a blood sample frum a patient an' made t'rounds o't' ward. The she steppd through a fence made o'orange nettyun' into a dekuntaminashun area, whar she carefullee shimmiet out o...

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Smorgasbord Book Reviews from October 2022 - #Biography #Poetry #Life John Cornelius Rogers, #Fantasy D.Wallace Peach, #Memoir #Malaya Kwan Kew Lai, #Fantasy Chris Hall, #Paranormal #Romance D.L. Finn, #Romance Jan Sikes, #Prehistoric #Adventure #Fiction Jacqui Murray, #Comingofage #Fantasy Dan Antion

From October I will be sharing my previous reviews from 2022 in a monthly post and hope that if you have these books on your TBR already it might nudge them up the pile.. or encourage you to go across to buy them. This post contains late September and October 2022 reviews About the book Imaginary snakes, Ouija board experiments, World War II and Nursing Home Sex Scandals. John Cornelius Rogers,…

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Smorgasbord Book Reviews - #Malaya #1950s - The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly by Kwan Kew Lai

Smorgasbord Book Reviews – #Malaya #1950s – The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly by Kwan Kew Lai

Delighted to share my review for an extraordinary memoir by Kwan Kew Lai – The Girl Who Taught Herself How to Fly. On Pre-order for October 25th 2022 About the book ★★★★★ “A thoughtful consideration of the ways women and girls survive—and even thrive—within oppressive patriarchal systems.” Victoria Namkung, NBC News Kwan Kew Lai met her first Punjabi woman doctor while lying in a hospital bed…

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Smorgasbord Book Reviews - #Malaya #1950s - The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly by Kwan Kew Lai

Smorgasbord Book Reviews – #Malaya #1950s – The Girl Who Taught Herself to Fly by Kwan Kew Lai

Delighted to share my review for an extraordinary memoir by Kwan Kew Lai – The Girl Who Taught Herself How to Fly. On Pre-order for October 25th 2022 About the book ★★★★★ “A thoughtful consideration of the ways women and girls survive—and even thrive—within oppressive patriarchal systems.” Victoria Namkung, NBC News Kwan Kew Lai met her first Punjabi woman doctor while lying in a hospital bed…

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Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Kwan Kew Lai ’74 (@KwanKew), infectious disease physician & author of LEST WE FORGET: A DOCTOR’S EXPERIENCE WITH LIFE AND DEATH DURING THE EBOLA OUTBREAK

Kwan Kew Lai ’74, M.D., D.M.D., is an infectious disease specialist who has volunteered her medical services all over the world and the author of Lest We Forget: A Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak. In 2004, after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, she spent three weeks in India, caring for survivors. She soon left her position as a full-time Professor of Medicine in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine at UMass Memorial Medical Center and created a half-time position as a clinician, dedicating the other half of her time to humanitarian work. 

Since 2005, Lai has volunteered as a mentor to health workers addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Vietnam, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, Malawi and has provided earthquake relief in Haiti and Nepal, hurricane relief in the Philippines and drought and famine relief in Kenya and the Somalian border. She has also worked with refugees of the Democratic Republic of Congo and internally displaced people in Libya during the Arab Spring and South Sudan after the civil war and treated Ebola patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Most recently, she served as a medical volunteer in the Syrian refugee camps in mainland Greece and in Moria refugee camp on Lesvos, Greece for refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and the countries of the Sub-Saharan Africa and in the world’s biggest refugee camps for the Rohingya in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Lai has blogged extensively about her experiences.

Originally from Penang, Malaysia, Lai came to the United States after receiving a scholarship to attend Wellesley, where she studied molecular biology. “Without that open door I would not have gone on to become a doctor,” Lai wrote in her Doctors Without Borders bio. 

Lai has received numerous awards for her work, which include being a three-time recipient of the President’s Volunteer Service Award. In 2017, she was awarded Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award. In addition, Lai is the lead author of many publications and presentations. Her research has included HIV studies, infection control, hospital epidemiology, and antibiotic trials. She has served on many committees, task forces, and boards, including the Governor’s Advisory Board for the Elimination of Tuberculosis in Massachusetts. She is also an avid marathon runner and paints when she is inspired.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10, had the chance to converse with Lai via email about Lest We Forget and about her experiences at Wellesley and beyond. E.B. would also like to make note that Lai made time to answer these questions even while busy with her 45th Wellesley Reunion! 

EB: How did Lest We Forget come about? What inspired you to write the book?

KKL: I first became aware of the Ebola outbreak in March of 2014, I began to follow it very closely. I read about Ebola when I was in my training as an infectious disease specialist. It is a deadly viral infection but it usually occurs in Africa and I knew that it would be unlikely for me to see a patient with this infection. In the summer of 2014 when WHO finally acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, the nightly TV images of people desperate to get into a hospital and bodies lying in the streets because they were too infectious to be touched, moved me. I knew I had to be in West Africa to volunteer. 

I started blogging a few years ago when I went to volunteer to enable my family and close friends to keep abreast of my situation and so I did the same when I started volunteering in the Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU). Deeper into my volunteering I was very moved by the courage and resilience of the patients and the dedication and dogged determination of the people who worked alongside me and who risked their lives working in the frontline. After my first stint in West Africa, I was interviewed by NPR international health correspondent, Nurith Aizenman, about my experience and she had urged me to write a book. I had thought about that as well before she brought it up but I was too taken up into my second stint of Ebola volunteer by then. When I was in Sierra Leone doing my second Ebola volunteering, I was also contacted by an agency who wanted to represent me with either writing a book or making a documentary. However just before I left for Sierra Leone, I signed with my first agent about my book on Africa which is about my experiences as a volunteered doctor in HIV/AIDS and my work in the refugee camps. I did not feel it was ethically right to deal with another agency. Nevertheless, writing a book about Ebola became more urgent, I wanted to write this in honor and memory of the people afflicted by Ebola and the frontline bola fighters who put their lives on the line. It took me awhile for me to convince my agent to present my book on Ebola first before my book on Africa. 

EB: Lest We Forget is a work of nonfiction and, not only that, a book about a very intense topic. What was challenging about writing about that subject? What kept you wanting to write the book, even if it was difficult? And how did you handle writing about people's personal experiences, especially when dealing with sensitive medical information?

KKL: Keeping a daily blog helped to lighten the burden of writing about the trauma of the people all at once. The blog became my fact book that I could go back to if I did forget an event or a person. As I stated before, the book was written as a tribute to the people I wanted to honor and remember, that helped the process a great deal. I changed the names of the people as much as I could to preserve confidentiality. Keeping a blog daily also provided me an emotional catharsis while volunteering in the ETU. I also wanted to rejoice with the people who recovered from this grave illness.

EB: Is Lest We Forget is your first book? What was challenging about writing it, and what was rewarding about the process?

KKL: No, it is not my first book. In February 2014, I signed with an agent for my Africa book which I had been writing for a couple of years before Lest We Forget, which is about my volunteering experiences in Africa. Before then I attempted to write a book, a sort of coming-of-age story for my children, this has not been presented to anyone. My years of writing on my own have taught me that I still have a lot of work on that book and it would have to go through many more draughts. Keeping a blog or diary helps with one’s writing. Reading a lot and writing, both help with my writing.

I also learned a lot through trying to find an agent or publisher for my book, if there is no market for the topic of one’s book, it will not likely to be accepted by either. My book on Africa, tentatively titled, Into Africa: A Journey from Academic Medicine to Bush Medicine has been accepted a few months ago for publication next year, I found a publisher without the help of my agent. It will now go through many months of work with the editors, etc. before the actual date of publication.  I was told nine to fifteen months from May. 

EB: What advice would you give to someone writing a book? Perhaps someone also writing a nonfiction book about an intense topic?

KKL: Writing and rewriting many times over. Keep a blog on your experiences, despite the intensity, you would be surprised how your mind works to block the painful parts of the experiences. If you have some willing readers, it may be helpful to let others read your draughts.

EB: In addition to your work as an infectious disease specialist, have you always enjoyed writing? Did you write at all before this book? Did you study writing while you were at Wellesley?

KKL: As a professor of medicine, I presented in national and international conferences, wrote and published many scientific papers, and a few medical essays.  As foreign students, we were all required to take a course in English as second language during our first year, I did not find this very helpful but it was required. In my junior year, I took a writing course in which we were required to write and critique each other’s writings. We met once a week at the professor’s home. I did not find this helpful either. It seemed quite subjective and I think it was an easy course for the professor who I think did not offer helpful advice on our writing. I find scientific writings tend to be precise, cut and dry, very different from creative writing and as my background is in science, I have a great deal to learn.

EB: How did your time at Wellesley influence you and your career path, if at all?

KKL: I was more influenced by what I read during my teenage years. Wellesley provided a safe and secure place for me to grow. Coming from an Asian background, we are not taught to seek guidance and friendship from the professors, they are often put on the pedestal to revere and not as someone you could seek advice, reveal your vulnerabilities, or share your ambitions with. In my later years, I’m often jealous of Wellesley classmates who kept up friendship with their professors after they left college. My foreign student advisor at Wellesley advised me not to apply to medical schools because many excellent foreign students in the past did not get admitted and that I should apply to other allied health professions instead. I was accepted at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine after my junior year but I realized that Medicine was still my first love and after my dental degree I went back to medical school.

EB: Who at Wellesley made the biggest impact on you and your career? Faculty, staff, fellow students? Which particular individuals?

KKL: As I expressed above, I wished I was freer in finding advisors in my professors. Jeanette McPherrin, who became the Dean of Foreign Students during my last years at Wellesley, will always be remembered by me as a friend who kept up a correspondence with me until she passed. I found her to be non-judgmental, genuinely kind, and interested in all foreign students as individuals. 

The biggest impact for me was when Wellesley College offered me a full scholarship, this gave me the opportunity to get an education and fulfil my ambition to be a doctor. I remember being inspired by Dr. Tom Dooley and Dr. Albert Schweitzer who went to underdeveloped countries to provide medical care and Wellesley College’s motto of non ministrari sed ministare also spur me on to pay it forward. 

EB: What else would you like our readers to know about you and/or your work?

KKL: I currently live in Belmont, MA and have three children. Last week, I received a letter from the Dean of my medical school that they have selected me to receive their Distinguished Alumnus Service Award in October 2019.

EB: That’s wonderful! Congratulations!

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U.S. Boosts Ebola Training of Health Workers

ANNISTON, Ala.—Coverd hed ta toe n' a protectif' yalla suit, apern, gloves, hood, goggles an' boots, Kwun Kew Lai took a blood sample frum a patient an' made t'rounds o't' ward. The she steppd through a fence made o'orange nettyun' into a dekuntaminashun area, whar she carefullee shimmiet out o...