70 years' of conjugal life ends at 100

Siti Hasmah Mohamad Ali, the wife of Malaysia’s longest-serving prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and a prominent public health advocate, has died at the age of 100.

She died at the National Heart Institute in Kuala Lumpur on Monday morning (September 28), her son Mokhzani Mahathir confirmed.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim expressed his condolences to Mahathir and his family and said Siti Hasmah would be accorded a state funeral.

“The nation will continue to remember her motherly figure and appreciate her contributions and services,” Anwar said in a statement.

She was expected to be buried at a Muslim cemetery in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya, later on Monday.

Siti Hasmah was a well-known public figure in Malaysia, both as the wife of one of the country’s most influential political leaders and for her own work in medicine, public health and social welfare.

Born in 1926, she studied medicine at the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore, where she met Mahathir in the late 1940s.

The couple married in 1956 and celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary in August. They raised seven children, including businessman Mokhzani Mahathir, activist Marina Mahathir and politician Mukhriz Mahathir.

Siti Hasmah was among Malaysia’s pioneering Malay women doctors.

She worked in maternal and child health and became the first woman appointed as a medical officer in Kedah’s Maternal and Child Health Department in 1965. She later became the state’s first woman Maternal and Child Health Officer.

Over the years, she was involved in campaigns promoting maternal and child healthcare, family planning, literacy and efforts to combat drug abuse.

Mahathir, now 101, has described his wife as a key source of support throughout his long political career.

He served as Malaysia’s prime minister from 1981 to 2003, overseeing a period of rapid industrialisation and economic expansion.

He returned to power in 2018 after leading an opposition coalition to an election victory over then-prime minister Najib Razak, whose administration had been engulfed by the multibillion-dollar 1MDB corruption scandal.

Mahathir, then aged 92, became the world’s oldest serving head of government.

His second period as prime minister lasted less than two years, ending in 2020 after the collapse of his governing coalition amid political turmoil.

Despite spending decades alongside one of Malaysia’s most dominant and sometimes divisive political figures, Siti Hasmah developed a public profile of her own, particularly through her work in healthcare and social causes.

Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim and Queen Raja Zarith Sofiah also expressed condolences to the family following her death.