45 DOCTORS IN LIM FAMILY
Family planning to open a private hospital
GEORGE TOWN
THE family of the late Lim Tang Too, a rubber tapper, can very well enter the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most number of doctors. There are 45 of them spread over Lim’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Lim, who is survived by his wife, Loo Siew Chin, had always stressed the importance of education to their 11 children, and eight of them are doctors.
Loo, 95, a former rubber tapper along with her late husband, had a tough time raising their large family with their meagre earnings, but had always wanted their children to have a comfortable life.
Today, the family, including the extended family, can boast of 45 doctors, 20 of them being specialists, and one is an associate professor at Universiti Malaya.
Among Loo’s nine sons and two daughters, her eldest son, Datuk Dr Lim Boon Sho, runs Klinik Lim in Nibong Tebal.
He said his father was the one who inspired them to become doctors to help other family members who often fell sick.
Dr Boon Sho, the first in the family to graduate as a doctor, said he began studying medicine in India in 1964.
“When we were kids, we often fell sick and my father used to send us to the general hospital for treatment.
“Due to financial constraints, my father came out with an idea of having a doctor in the family so that the rest would be well taken care of.
“After I graduated, my brothers, one by one, went on the same path,” he said during a family gathering here on Saturday night.
Dr Boon Sho, who was Sungai Bakap assemblyman from 1986 to 1990, said after the death of his father nine years ago, the family continued to be passionate about medicine.
“My brothers and I always talked about medicine, but we never forced our children to become doctors.
“We merely wanted them to have a good education,” he said.
Of Dr Boon Sho’s 10 other siblings, seven of them are doctors Dr Lim Boon Sin, 68, Dr Lim Boon Ben, 66, Dr Lim Boon Seng, 64, Dr Lim Boon Hock, 59, Dr Lim Boon Han, 55, Dr Lim Boon Kiong, 52, and Dr Lim Boon Aik, 50.
Dr Boon Sho’s eldest sister, Lim Ai Hwa, 76, is a housewife; his younger brother Lim Boon Tai, 62 is a businessman, while his youngest sister, Lim Ai Ching, is a lawyer.
Dr Boon Han, who is also Nibong Tebal Gerakan division chairman, said with more than 45 doctors and specialists in the family, there was also a plan to set up a private hospital run by the Lim family.
“Maybe one day, we can introduce a Lim family hospital, but everything is still premature. We are in the planning stage,” he said.
He added that the family, which has about 100 members from four generations, made it a point to get together every Chinese New Year and medicine would always be the main topic of discussion. Bernama