ERLICK o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-05 published
A life cut short by severe acute respiratory syndrome
The only doctor to have died from the virus in North America,
he was a caring professional and a loving family man
By Bill GLADSTONE
Special to The Globe and Mail Friday, September
5, 2003 - Page R13
As the only doctor in North America to die of severe acute respiratory
syndrome, Toronto physician Nestor
YANGA may have gained more
prominence in death than by anything he had accomplished in life.
He was a dedicated general practitioner, church volunteer and
family man who was passionate about everything he did, according
to Friends. A former president of the Canadian Filipino Medical
Association, he loved dancing, gardening and spending time with
his wife and two sons.
In the early days of the city's outbreak of severe acute respiratory
syndrome, as doctors were still scrambling to identify and contain
the alarming new disease, a patient turned up at Dr.
YANGA's
east-Toronto clinic who was a family member of one of the first
carriers in Canada; two more family members came to see him two
days later. In medical parlance, all would be known as "super-secretors"
for the highly virulent and infectious strains they carried.
"He saw them in the waiting room and told them they'd better
go to the hospital," said his friend, Dr. Bina
COMENDADOR, a
Richmond Hill, Ontario, psychiatrist.
Shortly afterwards Dr.
YANGA came down with a slight fever, then
a dry cough. When the symptoms worsened, he visited a newly instituted
screening centre for severe acute respiratory syndrome and was
told to get to Sunnybrook Hospital right away. "Being the doctor
he was, he drove himself to the hospital and he never came out,"
Dr. COMENDADOR said.
He died after a four-month struggle with the disease on August
13 at the age of 54. He was the 44th severe acute respiratory
syndrome victim in the Toronto area.
An estimated 2,000 people, including many provincial dignitaries,
medical professionals and members of the city's Filipino community,
paid their last respects to Dr.
YANGA at a funeral in Toronto's
St. Michael's Cathedral. In eulogies, he was depicted as a hero
who had fallen on the front lines of medicine's unrelenting battle
against illness of every kind.
"He contracted the disease while caring for one of his patients,"
said Dr. Larry
ERLICK, president of the Ontario Medical Association.
"It's a risk that physicians face every day."
As if to underscore that risk, two of the three doctors who worked
with Dr. YANGA in the Lapsley Family Doctors Clinic were also
infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome last April; one
remains hospitalized while the other is still too weak to resume
his medical duties; the fourth recently reopened the clinic and
is struggling with a fourfold increase in patient load. As well,
two nurses in the Toronto area have died of the virus after caring
for severe acute respiratory syndrome-stricken patients.
Born in Malabon, the Philipines, on October 8, 1948, Nestor
YANGA
studied medicine at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila
he specialized in surgery and graduated in 1975. He emigrated
to Canada in 1981 and was married the same year in Toronto, having
met his prospective bride, Remy, during a visit two years earlier.
Passing a rigorous set of medical exams in Canada, Dr.
YANGA
interned at a Newfoundland hospital for two months, then at two
hospitals in Toronto. Intending to become a psychiatrist, he
studied at McMaster University and at the University of Toronto,
but withdrew in his third year, telling Friends he preferred
to practise family medicine.
Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Dulce
BISMONTE recalled that Dr.
YANGA
had inspired her to enter psychiatry and that she was very saddened
when he told her he was leaving that field. "He was so compassionate
and caring, he would have made an excellent psychiatrist," she
said.
As a general practitioner, Dr.
YANGA got to know many of his
patients as people and often spent more time with them than strictly
necessary, to the occasional consternation of patients in his
waiting room. Any annoyance would invariably melt away, however,
as the meticulous but easygoing doctor would bestow a similar
level of care and warmth upon each waiting patient in turn.
"He was the kind of person you could respect and really care
about, and I think his patients felt that too," Dr.
COMENDADOR
said. "He would make you feel that you were special and that
you were the most important patient."
Dr. YANGA sometimes assisted with surgeries at Centenary Hospital
and worked as a volunteer at the sexual assault clinic at Grace
Hospital. He and his wife were also dedicated members of the
Filipino-dominated charismatic Catholic group Bukas Loob Sa Diyos.
Having performed in his youth with a dance group, which toured
all over Southeast Asia, Dr.
YANGA retained a passion for ballroom
dancing, which he did with his wife, and line dancing, which
he did apart from her, with others. "Nestor loved to dance,"
Dr. BISMONTE observed. "He might have been on the chubby side,
but he was a very graceful dancer."
He was, above all, a consummate family man who always reserved
plenty of time to be with his family and usually took them with
him to medical conferences at resorts. "His loss is a tragedy
to his family as well as to all of his patients, and I don't
know how we're going to overcome it," Dr.
ERLICK said. "He had
a huge following and it's hard to replace a physician like that."
Nestor YANGA leaves his wife
Remy, sons Nelson, 20, and Ronald,
16, brother Emmanuel and father Lauro, all of Toronto.
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