KUALA LUMPUR — Tun Dr Hasmah Mohamad Ali, a pioneering Malay woman physician and the lifelong companion of Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister, Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, died this morning at 9.20am. She was 100.

Affectionately know as Dr Siti Hasmah to her chagrin, she is survived by Dr Mahathir, 101, whom she married on Aug 5, 1956, and their seven children.

Just last month, the couple were formally recognized by Asean Records and Asia Records as the oldest living former head of government and spouse in the region, marking the first such partnership where both partners attained the age of 100.

Born in Klang, Selangor, on July 12, 1926, she was the sixth of ten children in an illustrious family. Her brothers included former Bank Negara Malaysia governor Tun Ismail Mohamed Ali, former armed forces chief Gen Tun Mohamed Hashim Mohd Ali, and former Selangor menteri besar Datuk Ahmad Razali Mohd Ali. Her sister, Tan Sri Dr Saleha Mohd Ali, was also a prominent medical practitioner.

Dr Hasmah entered the history books as one of the first Malay women to enrol at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore, where she first met Dr Mahathir in 1947 before graduating in 1955.

She subsequently joined the government medical service, dedicating her early career to rural Kedah, where she spearheaded maternal health, basic hygiene, nationwide immunisation, and public health education drives.

Her career was marked by groundbreaking milestones: she was appointed the first woman medical officer in the Maternal and Child Health Department in 1965, and in 1974 became Kedah's first woman State Maternal and Child Health Officer.

After earning a diploma in public health from the University of Michigan in 1966, she served as a lecturer in the University of Malaya’s Faculty of Dentistry. Official health records credit her grassroots rural maternal initiatives in Kedah with dramatically reducing infant mortality rates from 75 deaths per 1,000 live births down to just six.