She Lives To Give

Claudine Pang is the woman who has – and does – it all. The inspiring eye surgeon, avid humanitarian and mother of two tells Nafeesa Saini how her thirst for helping others guides her life’s trajectory.

- Nafeesa Saini

Dr Claudine Pang’s gentle nature, soft-spoken voice and sunny disposition belies her prowess in the medical field. Her achievements read like a laundry list – for one, she is one of the few doctors with multiple international fellowships in the subspecialty fields of both medical retina and vitreoretinal surgery; she is also the first woman in the world to receive the coveted William H Ross Surgical Vitreoretinal Fellowship.

To bring eye health awareness to the forefront, the eye surgeon, ophthalmologist, Medical Director and Founder of Asia Retina Eye Surgery Centre created the first mobile eye health app in Singapore. The app allows users to perform basic self-assessment tests and includes eye wellness tips. For the centre’s patients, it sends reminder alerts for eye drop applications and holds patient records.

For Claudine, ophthalmology was her life’s calling. While her colleagues struggled to examine the eye, she had a natural aptitude for it, along with the microsurgical dexterity needed for eye surgery. “There is so much beauty within the eyes,” she gushes as she recalls the first time she examined the retina.

“The eyes are the true window of the whole body,” she says. “You can tell a lot of things about a person’s health from the retina. For example, whether a person has hypertension, anaemia, heart disease and autoimmune diseases.”

Claudine, who coincidentally has perfect vision, visibly brightens when she tells me the highlight of her ophthalmic career: her patients.