Dr Yvonne Ho
MELBOURNE: When Dr Yvonne Ho moved to Australia from Malaysia with her parents 37 years ago as a young student, she never dreamt that one day she would become an internationally acclaimed specialist in radiology and nuclear medicine.
In recognition of her brilliant career and vast achievements, Dr Ho was yesterday appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Australia Day Honours List for her “significant services to radiology and nuclear medicine, as a practitioner and educator, and through professional organisations”.
“The award is a great honour and I will cherish it,” Dr Ho told Bernama from her home in the suburb of Hawthorn East.
She will go to Canberra at a later date to be conferred by Australia’s Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove.
Dr Ho comes from a family with a strong medical background as her father Ho Fook Cheong was a prominent doctor and her Penang-born great great uncle Dr Wu Lien-teh, was a Queen’s Scholar and the first Chinese student to study medicine in Cambridge.
It was his successful fight which helped terminate the Chinese pneumonic plague of 1910 that brought him international fame.
Dr Ho studied medicine at the University of Melbourne after completing school at the Methodist Girls’ School in Ipoh and the Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Melbourne.
As one of their youngest graduates, she went on to subspecialise in nuclear medicine and positron emission tomography (PET), to become the first Australian woman of
Asian heritage and the first Victorian woman to be dually qualified in Radiology & Nuclear Medicine.
She also holds a musculoskeletal fellowship from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. — Bernama