When it comes to delivering bone marrow from anywhere in the world to a waiting patient, failure is not an option for volunteer courier Roger Prior.

On one occasion, Mr Prior was scheduled to fly on Singapore Airlines from Houston, Texas, with stem cells crucial to someone here.

Suddenly, lightning struck the control tower and knocked it out. The airport was shut down temporarily so that emergency facilities could be set up.

“We departed three hours later, which meant our flight was due to land in San Francisco minutes after the connecting flight to Singapore was to have taken off. I spoke to the cabin crew about the importance of my cargo and one of them informed the captain. It seemed he stepped on the gas,” he said.

Mr Prior was received by a Singapore Airlines representative in San Francisco, who raced him across the terminal to a waiting plane with 400 passengers already strapped in.

The stem cells got to the patient in time.

“I am holding someone’s life in my hands,” Mr Prior, an Australian in his 70s, told The New Paper.

He would know.

His eldest son Daniel was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1996 and needed a transplant.

The Singapore Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) was very new then and the registry was mainly set up to meet the needs of the Singapore population.

His son, then aged 11 and a Singapore-born child of an Australian father and a British mother, could not find a local match.

“The registry played a vital role in the global search,” said Mr Prior, who has been a permanent resident here since the 1980s and runs his own executive search firm, Roger Prior Associates.

“I still remember how vulnerable and on-edge everybody felt waiting for the precious hand-carried cargo of bone marrow to arrive from Australia.”

HELP

So when the BMDP needed to establish an international courier service in 1995 to support the growing number of overseas donors, the grateful Mr Prior helped out.

The BMDP said volunteer couriers can make up to several trips within a year. Mr Prior never really experienced any language problems “although sometimes I used my few words of Mandarin, German and often a lot of hand gestures to get by”.

His flights and accommodation are usually paid for by the patients once a match has been found, said BMDP president Jane Prior.

“But the search for a match is done free. We also reimburse Roger’s expenses abroad,” she added.

Mr Prior has made more than 100 trips and travelled all over the world as a BMDP courier to bring stem cells back to those in need in Singapore and neighbouring countries, collecting products from the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China.

“The BMDP used to be a one-man organisation and did not have any resources,” he said. “The transplant doctors were also acting as the couriers.

“From our own family experience, I believed their time was better spent doing what they are best at, which is looking after their patients.”

Donor’s card kept his hopes up

All the card said was “Xi wang ni kang fu” (“Hope you recover” in Mandarin).

It was a simple message brought all the way from Taiwan but it kept Mr Simon Tan, 54, going.

“It was from my bone marrow donor and it accompanied the stem cell more than 3,000km to save my life,” said the vice-president of corporate governance at Li & Fung, a consumer goods design, development, sourcing and logistics company headquartered in Hong Kong.

Mr Tan had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), a fast-growing cancer of a type of white blood cells that crowds out the bone marrow, preventing it from making normal red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets that the body needs.

He only found out in November 2011 when he went to have his appendix taken out. Before that, he had never been sick.

“I had been flying here and there for work. I ate normally and looked perfectly healthy,” the divorcee told The New Paper.

It was only when he flew back from a trip to Hong Kong that year that an “unbearable” pain in his abdomen forced him to make a trip to the hospital straight from the airport.

That was when doctors told him he had ALL.

“About 97 per cent of my blood had been compromised by white blood cells,” he said.

After surgery, he was kept in an isolated room with no visitors allowed.

“That was the hardest part for me, especially when it was over the festive period. But luckily I had my mobile phone with me. It was my only link with the rest of the world,” he said.

Mr Tan was given three options by his doctor: chemotherapy, bone marrow transplant or not do anything and just succumb.

“As someone who assesses risks, I did my own assessment and picked the obvious one – option two. That started the ball rolling to search for a potential donor,” he said.

It was in February 2012 when the Taiwanese woman donor was found.

TREATMENT

He said: “I had to die first before I could live. My immune system and marrow were blasted and killed. Then the stem cells were transplanted in me.”

It took just 45 minutes for the bone marrow stem cells to be successfully transplanted into Mr Tan.

“The stem cells took less than 14 days to replicate, what doctors called an Olympic Gold,” he said, but Mr Tan did not get to “keep that medal for long”.

Four months after the transplant, he developed Stage 4 lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes. He had to fight again and fortunately, he won that battle too, with the help of strong antibiotics.

Today, Mr Tan is cured of his cancer and has gained some weight after dropping 20kg from 90kg.

“My hope now is to meet my donor and say thank you. I hope I will be able to pay it forward,” he said.

DONATE & HELP SAVE LIVES

The Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) is a charity responsible for building and managing Singapore’s only register of volunteer bone marrow donors.

Established in 1993, it provides a 365-day service to the hospitals to search the local and overseas registers to find a matching donor for their patients.

There are 62,000 currently on the Singapore list.

Since there is just a one in 20,000 chance of finding a matching donor, BMDP hopes to recruit 50,000 new donors in the next three years.

BMDP is a member of the World Marrow Donor Association.

Wanting people to see how unrelated blood stem cell donations are saving lives in a very real way all over the world, its president from 2013 to 2014, Associate Professor William Hwang, penned a book entitled Sharing Life to document personal stories of patients, donors and even couriers.

Professor Hwang, who is also head of the department of haematology at the Singapore General Hospital, said the book “gives readers a behind-the-scene glimpse of how individuals and organisations with a common vision come together, cross boundaries of nationality, ethnicity and geography to make a real difference to the life of another through the exchange of stem cells”.

The book is available for sale at US$19.90 (S$27) on Amazon.com and Armour Publishing.

This article was first published on June 7, 2016.
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When her boyfriend wanted to break up, she ripped off her clothes and threatened to run naked in the streets if he didn’t stay with her.

Then she threatened to throw her two-year-old son from his sixth-storey flat.

Finally, she grabbed a knife from the kitchen and cut herself, but he managed to stop her.

The man, whom we shall call Peter, told The New Paper in Mandarin yesterday that his live-in girlfriend’s extreme reaction merely confirmed that she was not the woman for him.

He told her to pack her things and leave.

A month after the break-up, he received a phone message from his ex-lover, whom we shall call Karen.

Accompanying an image of a marriage certificate bearing their names was a brief message in Mandarin: “You are mine.”

After getting over the shock, Peter made a police report.

Yesterday, Karen, a 32-year-old finance assistant, was jailed for four weeks after pleading guilty to one count each of engaging in a conspiracy to cheat and engaging in a conspiracy to make a false statement in a statutory declaration before a Registry of Marriages (ROM) officer.

Court papers said Karen had secretly got hold of Peter’s identity card and got a man to impersonate him so they could register the marriage at the ROM.

The court ordered that both parties not be named to protect the identity of Karen’s son.

Peter, now a 31-year-old driver, told TNP that he met Karen around 2010 when they were both working in a retail store. The then customer service officer approached him and asked him out.

“She came across as normal then, and we went on very normal dates to the movies and the like,” said Peter, who was working in sales at the time.

“She became pregnant and gave birth a year into our relationship, and moved in with me.”

They lived in his flat in Serangoon for about two years before he decided to end the relationship.

After about a year together, Karen’s behaviour grew more erratic, he said. She started throwing tantrums and shouting at him over petty things.

He said he had tolerated her behaviour as he loved her and “trusted her blindly”.

But some things struck him as odd, such as Karen forbidding him to be present during her child’s birth.

He also noticed that the father’s name on the boy’s birth certificate was not his.

“I asked her about this and she said it was different because it was in hanyu pinyin,” said Peter.

Though he can read hanyu pinyin, he said he chose to believe her.

But he was shocked to find out later that Karen was a divorcee and was still seeing her ex-husband. According to court papers, she was still married when she gave birth to her son.

Peter said: “I also found out she was staying over at her ex-husband’s home on some nights while telling me that she was visiting her aunt.”

CONVINCED

Throughout the relationship, Peter had treated the child as his but he is now convinced otherwise.

He said: “She even said that I could take a DNA test to prove it but she changed her mind later.”

Peter never thought he would be deceived to such an extent and decided to break up with Karen in 2012.

But she became hysterical and threatened to take drastic measures to hold on to him.

“She went crazy, stripping and then threatening me with the child,” he said.

“She said she was losing her mind and was going to kill herself.”

Peter has a new girlfriend but is unable to get married until he resolves the matter of his “marriage” with Karen. Court papers said Peter must obtain a Family Court order to void the marriage.

“I just want to live my own normal life. I never want to see her again and will never forgive her,” he said.

Prosecution: She knew he wouldn’t marry her

Despite their break-up, she refused to let go of him.

So she hatched a devious scheme to get them married – without his knowledge.

She secretly got hold of his identity card and roped in another man to impersonate him so they could register her marriage to her ex-lover at the Registry Of Marriages (ROM).

They successfully carried out her plan on Oct 25, 2012, and she later received the certificate of marriage from the ROM.

The woman, now 32, was jailed for four weeks yesterday after pleading guilty to one count each of engaging in a conspiracy to cheat and engaging in a conspiracy to give a false statement in a statutory declaration before an ROM officer.

Her alleged accomplice, also 32, has yet to be dealt with in court. Their relationship was not revealed in court.

The woman and her ex-boyfriend cannot be named to protect her young son, so we shall call them Karen and Peter.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Chew Xin Ying told the court that in 2010, Karen was still married but no longer lived with her husband.

Karen met Peter that year and they became lovers. She later gave birth to a boy and told Peter that the baby was his. But the birth certificate named her husband as the boy’s father.

Court papers did not identify the boy’s biological father.

The couple were divorced in 2011, the court heard.

In 2012, Peter broke up with Karen after suspecting that the child was not his.

DPP Chew said: “The accused was very unhappy as she wanted (Peter) to return to her and not marry anyone else.

“However, she knew that (Peter) did not and would not consent to marrying her.”

On Oct 3, Karen filed a notice of marriage on the ROM website, stating her intention to marry Peter.

She and Peter’s impersonator went to the ROM on Oct 25 and appeared before licensed commissioner of oaths Kevin Tan Kok Hee.

When Mr Tan asked them to complete the statutory declaration, the imposter forged Peter’s signature.

Mr Tan then handed them a marriage certificate containing Karen’s and Peter’s names.

Karen and the imposter later met marriage solemniser Michelle Leong Ton at Din Tai Fung restaurant at 112 Katong shopping mall.

When Madam Leong asked for their ICs, the man handed over Peter’s IC.

The couple then said their vows, exchanged rings and signed the marriage certificate. Two witnesses, Karen’s friend and her mother, also signed the certificate.

ROM approved the registration after receiving a copy of the signed certificate from Madam Leong.

The next day, Karen sent Peter a photo of the certificate and told him they were married to each other. He made a police report 12 days later.

MISUSED

DPP Chew said: “ROM has confirmed that in the present case where (Peter’s) identity was misused to register a marriage without his consent, a Family Court order has to be obtained to void the marriage.”

She urged District Judge Salina Ishak to jail Karen for four to six weeks for the conspiracy to give a false statement in a statutory declaration to Mr Tan, and a month for the cheating offence.

She also stressed that Karen had abetted her alleged accomplice to give a false declaration to a government agency.

Karen’s lawyer, Ms Diana Ngiam, asked for her client to be jailed for two to three weeks.

She said the Institute of Mental Health found Karen had an “acute stress reaction” and had attempted suicide when Peter ended the relationship.

Ms Ngiam said this had led to her “misguided actions”.

The New Paper asked the Ministry of Social and Family Development what it is doing to prevent similar offences in future.

An ROM spokesman replied: “The ROM has tightened its identification process and will conduct additional checks on alternative photo-IDs where applicants’ faces and photos in ICs differ.”

Karen could have been jailed up to three years and fined on each charge.

‘Nothing wrong with the system’

Cases of impersonation for the purpose of marriage are rare, said lawyers contacted by The New Paper yesterday.

Mr Louis Joseph of Regent Law said: “It’s not common for these lapses to happen. I believe it’s a one-off case.”

When asked if the Registry of Marriages (ROM) should tighten its processes to prevent such incidents from recurring, TSMP Law Corporation director Anand Nalachandran said the verification of documents and statutory declaration process might be the appropriate stage to have further verification done as both parties must be present at the ROM.

“However, beyond the existing practices at the ROM, there may not be further steps that can be taken to verify the identity of the parties,” he added.

Mr Shashi Nathan, a partner in WithersKhattarWong, said: “This is one individual trying to beat the system. There is nothing wrong with the system at the moment.”

Mr Joseph said photos of identity cards could be updated more often to prevent such incidents – he has encountered clients who look different from their IC photos.

ashaffiq@sph.com.sg

This article was first published on June 07, 2016.
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The corrugated roof sheets of terraced houses in Chip Bee Gardens are being replaced after asbestos was found in some of them.

This has unsettled some residents in the private housing estate beside Holland Village who fear that their roof sheets, or awnings, might be unsafe.

Asbestos, once a popular component in building materials, is linked to health problems such as lung cancer. Its use in buildings was banned here in 1989, but many earlier structures still contain the substance.

While the 349 state-owned black- and-white terraced houses in Chip Bee Gardens were built in the 1960s, the use of asbestos there was uncovered only earlier this year, The Straits Times has learnt.

The Singapore Land Authority (SLA), custodian of state-owned properties, said this happened on April 26, when a contractor who was inspecting a broken roof above the front porch of a vacant house in Jalan Puteh Jerneh noticed that the material could contain asbestos. The porch roof was removed on April 29 and replaced on May 3. Laboratory tests revealed that it contained chrysotile, a common type of asbestos.

Tests done on two other houses in the neighbourhood also uncovered asbestos in their front roof sheets, the SLA said. Several residents met the SLA on May 17.

Housewife Essa Tay, 34, who lives across from the house with the broken porch roof, said: “I feel uncomfortable. I’m especially worried because I have a two-year-old daughter and I’m pregnant.”

Citing the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), which regulates asbestos removal here, the SLA said roof awnings are not likely to pose any health risk to occupants if they are intact. But if they are disturbed, asbestos fibres could become airborne.

As an interim measure, an asbestos specialist hired by the SLA will visually inspect 323 terraced houses with corrugated roof sheets in the estate over the next few weeks.

The remaining 26 units are not affected as they have clay-tiled porch roofs that do not contain asbestos.

Depending on their condition, the roof sheets will be left alone, coated with a sealant, or replaced.

So far, the SLA’s asbestos specialist has inspected the awnings of 110 houses in the estate.

About a tenth of them were found to be in good condition, while 20 per cent are substantially damaged and require removal. The remaining 70 per cent have some cracks and damage and will be coated with a sealant.

“Should repairs or replacements be needed, they will be carried out promptly and safely by our asbestos specialists and in accordance with MOM guidelines,” said the SLA.

Under the guidelines, such work has to be carried out by an approved asbestos removal contractor. The work area must be enclosed to prevent the asbestos from spreading.

The SLA said that as tenants have to move out during the replacement of awnings, which takes about two to three days per unit, rent will be waived for that period.

When The Straits Times visited the estate last week, three houses in Jalan Hitam Manis were enclosed in sheets for asbestos removal.

Mr Lee Seng Lai, director of the SLA’s land operations (private) division, said that as a precaution, the SLA plans to replace all affected roof awnings in the estate within the next 18 months through a tendered project. “We have explained the situation to the tenants and will continue to keep them informed of the progress with the ongoing works.”

There were more than 250 cases of asbestos removal here last year, with about 200 cases on average each year, MOM figures show.

Some residents want their roofs to be replaced sooner and want better compensation for having to vacate during the asbestos removal.

Others are less troubled. A 40- year-old Jalan Hitam Manis resident from New York said: “I was born in the 1970s, when asbestos was alive and kicking. I don’t think of it as a problem. I’ll be worried when they start ripping the roofs out and replacing them. That’s when it’s dangerous.”

The SLA said that, in consultation with the MOM, residents may remain in their houses while asbestos removal is under way next door as measures are taken to prevent the spread of asbestos.

But Chip Bee resident and hedge- fund director Ian Seow, 37, said: “Going by the book is one thing, but this is an issue of health. We don’t want to take any chances.”

This article was first published on Jun 07, 2016.
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