Professor Fung Yee Chan

Professor in Maternal Fetal Medicine, Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricans and Gynaecologists (FRANZCOG), Fellow of the Hong Kong College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (FHKCOG), FHKAM, Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (FRCOG), DDU, College of Maternal Fetal Medicine (CMFM), Medical Doctor (MD)

19/09/1955 to 30/05/2007

Professor Fung Yee Chan was highly intelligent, widely respected by her peers and had an enormous work ethic. She was a perfectionist and ‘set the bar’ very high for herself and her team and she always put the patient first.

She leaves a legacy of Australia’s most prestigious Maternal Fetal Medicine (MFM) Centre at the Mater with co-location of public and private patients, an international reputation for feto-scopic procedures and a strong research and education focus.

Her story at Mater Mothers’ Hospital (MMH) began in 1993, when Fung Yee was recruited from Hong Kong by the then Director of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Dr Aldo Vacca. Then, there was no Maternal Fetal Medicine Centre, merely a single ultrasound scanner at the back of the antenatal clinic, and an enthusiastic Dr Murray Stone who was preparing for his Diploma of Diagnostic Ultrasound.

Fung Yee completed her certificate of MFM of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) in 1995, the first Queensland obstetrician to receive this recognition. She was the founding Director of the Centre for MFM at MMH and was appointed Professor of MFM by The University of Queensland.

In 13 short years, she built up the centre of MFM at MMH to arguably the foremost unit in Australia serving both public and private cohorts without a start up budget from Queensland Health. Her perseverance and charisma enabled her to establish a fully designed and equipped department with five MFM specialists, seven ultrasonographers and four four-dimensional state of the art scanners, and the ability to recruit international and Australian fellows.

Fung Yee’s interests involved all aspects of antenatal screening, diagnosis and therapy. Recognising the difficulties in providing tertiary services posed by the vast size of Queensland she and her team pioneered the use of real-team ultrasound to provide sub-specialist expertise in regional centres of Queensland.

Her team tele-linked with Professor Rueben Quintero in Tampa Florida to fast track the ‘J-Curve’ of learning in the art of fetal endoscopic surgery in Australia. She was the first person in Australia to perform keyhole laser surgery to treat Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS), (a major complication of identical twin pregnancies where the blood from one twin is transfused to the other twin via abnormal blood vessels in the shared placenta). The Mater has now performed in excess of 100 laser ablations of cross anastomotic vessels in TTTS in the Asia Pacific region with results matching the best in the world.

She was an internationally acclaimed clinician and researcher and was in high demand as a national and international speaker. Her passion for research and audit were legendary. She instilled the need to audit outcomes of all the tertiary antenatal scans performed and this became a fertile area for conference presentations and scientific publications.

The Fetal Dysmorphology meeting became the teaching showpiece of the MMH as at the cutting edge of perinatal medicine attracting a diverse audience of specialists, ethicists, scientists and allied health staff. Fung Yee and her team developed a model of patient care involving case management and consultations with all relevant specialists and neonatologists. There was a paradigm shift from diagnosis and management of the neonate at 40 weeks to that of the fetus at 18 weeks. She built strong relationships between MFM and neonatology and took a keen interest in the babies in Intensive Care Nurseries and subsequently through the Growth and Development Clinic.

To build a world acclaimed MFM Centre in a Catholic Hospital speaks volumes for her intellect and compassion and also her communication skills with the Sisters of Mercy. Fung Yee advocated passionately for an expansion of the MFM Centre at the new MMH, for the development of a five-year strategic plan, and for enhanced research grants.

She was the President of the Queensland branch of Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand (PSANZ) and Chair of the planning committee for the PSANZ 2008 Congress at the Gold Coast.

We have an obligation to continue her pioneer work and maintain or enhance the pre-eminent position of the MFM Centre at the MMH in this country.

She was loved by her patients and staff and will be greatly missed.

By Professor David Tudehope