In this #HCPsofMY video, Dr Sophia Rasheeqa Ismail, one of the three recipients of the 2017 Merdeka Award Grant for International Attachment, shares about what leads to her interest in NCDs, and what gives her strength to carry on her journey.



Transcript:

Working at the hospital, working at the klinik kesihatan, to me was not enough. That’s why I ventured into public health.

What a public health physician can do is whatever efforts, whatever interventions you do, policies that you change, will affect not only a community, but also an entire nation.

I want to be able to touch more lives, I want to be able to make a difference to more people.

It’s not easy to achieve what you want. I’m a single mum, so I have to manage my daughter, and myself, and my career on my own.

I think the strength is still prayers. It’s still God, and it’s my family. I will not be able to reach this stage without my support – my mum, my dad. My mum, whenever I need to go anywhere she’ll come.

My parents live in Singapore, so if I need to travel for more than three days, then she’ll come and sit with us, stay with my daughter.

It has not been easy. At times I just sit down and cry, it’s fine, but I still carry on and do things. MIMS

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