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Chumpon Chan ...
Dr Chumpon Chan (also known as Chumpon Chantharakulpongsa) is one of Asia’s most eminent neurosurgeons. His exceptional surgical skill is matched only by his dedication to his craft and calling. During his long and distinguished career, he has brought neurosurgery in Singapore to new heights, transforming the lives of countless patients, training generations of young doctors, and augmenting the quality and reach of neurosurgical services in Singapore and beyond.
Dr Chan was born in a shophouse in Trang, Thailand, the second of six children. His father was a rubber trader and his mother was illiterate. They were determined that their children should aspire to better lives, and so at the age of seven, young Chumpon was sent on his own to school in Penang. There he excelled, winning academic honours and accolades. In addition to his mother tongue of Thai, he mastered three more languages: English, Malay and Chinese.
In 1972, after achieving excellent results in the Cambridge A-level Examinations, he was awarded an ASEAN Scholarship by the Singapore government to study medicine. He graduated from the University of Singapore in 1977 with a Singapore Medical Association Bronze Medal for distinction in Anatomy. He then continued his surgical training in Singapore under a Singapore Government Scholarship, winning the Howard Eddy Gold Medal as the top candidate in the FRACS part 1 examination in 1980 and becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh) in 1981.
Dr Chan’s neurosurgical training in Singapore began at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in 1981, where he was mentored by Dr Tham Cheok Fai and Dr Gopal Baratham. His talent did not go unnoticed and in 1986, he won a Singapore Government HMDP Fellowship in Microvascular Neurosurgery to the prestigious Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Dr Chan’s work has been defined by a consistent desire to enhance the quality and accessibility of world-class neurosurgery in Singapore. On his return from Oxford, he was instrumental in establishing the Department of Neurosurgery at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) in 1990, where he pioneered multidisciplinary skull-base surgery. Over the course of his career, Dr Chan went on to hold virtually every significant office related to neurosurgery in Singapore, spearheading the improvement of clinical practice, standards, and programmes, most recently in his capacity as Deputy Director (Clinical) of the National Neuroscience Institute from 2004 to 2010.
But it is for his extraordinary skill as a surgeon for which he will be most remembered. Dr Chan is most famous as one of the lead surgeons who successfully separated the conjoined Nepalese twins Ganga and Jamuna Shrestha in 2001, an operation which took 97 hours and put Singapore neurosurgery on the world map, setting a record as the world’s longest ever operation. The feat was planned with a prototype of the DextroscopeTM, a 3D virtual reality workbench for planning and training in neurosurgery which Dr Chan was key in developing. Ever conscious of the need to impart his skills to the next generation, Dr Chan has mentored generations of neurosurgeons from Singapore and overseas, many of whom are now leading neurosurgeons in Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Nepal and China. He is on the Inter-collegiate MRCS Panel of Examiners and has been a Clinical Senior Lecturer at the National University of Singapore since 2002. Dr Chan continues to be very active in the ASEAN Neurosurgical Society of which he has been a Council Member since 1991 and remains heavily engaged in every aspect of specialist training and professional activities connected to the advancement of neurosurgery.
Dr Chan is married to Wong Lin Tze. They have three children: their eldest daughter Xin Hui graduated from the University of Oxford and is now a doctor at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford; their second daughter Siao Er is a financial statistician pursuing her Master’s Degree in the University of Illinois; and their son Shu Kiat has recently started medical school at the National University of Singapore, aspiring to follow in his father’s footsteps. Dr Chan and family continue to be involved in charity work, and seek to improve the lives of many in the community.
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