Delivering Hope

With the support of the Women’s Group, one doctor is working to find a cure for a disease that affects millions of women.

Dr Jerilee Azhary had delivered the diagnosis to patients countless times. But that didn’t make it any easier when she was told she was infertile herself.

Now a doctorate student at Tokyo University, she is researching a cure for polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a disorder that can affect fertility. It afflicts one in five women worldwide.

As the recipient of this year’s ¥2 million CWAJ-Women’s Group non-Japanese graduate scholarship, Azhary says the grant will aid her work in improving women’s reproductive health, including in her home country of Malaysia.

“I want to be a good scholar of CWAJ [College Women’s Association of Japan] and make them proud,” says Azhary. “I don’t want them to feel they made the wrong decision in selecting me.”

The Women’s Group raises a portion of the funding for the scholarship through its annual Carpet Auction.

Azhary, 39, grew up in the suburbs of Kuala Lumpur. The daughter of a street artist, she loved drawing and dreamed of becoming an architect. But her father convinced her to pursue medicine. “When a country is in war, everybody gets killed, except the doctor,” he told her.

While her father wanted her to become a cardiologist, Azhary chose to study obstetrics and gynecology, fascinated with this “tiny organ that can expand to fit a little baby.” After completing her master’s at the University of Malaya, she worked at a clinic treating teenage girls with menstrual problems.

In the meantime, Azhary and her husband tried to conceive for six years. Her third attempt at in vitro fertilization proved successful, but she lost the baby in the second trimester. Her PCOS diagnosis came in 2015. She was told she could not have children.

“I was depressed. It was difficult,” says Azhary. “I decided to stop trying.”

She applied for the Tokyo University doctorate program and is now part of a team developing a drug that prevents ovary cell death caused by PCOS. She also wants to improve PCOS diagnosis accuracy, as more than half the women affected never show symptoms.

“A teenager will sit on the PCOS for as long as she could until she gets married and finds out she is infertile,” says Azhary. “If she comes from an uneducated background, she will sit on it until she reaches 40 or 50 years old. Then she will get endometrium cancer and she doesn’t even know that she has PCOS. That is a very common scenario in my country. I want to break that cycle.”

When Azhary moved to Tokyo, she was 25 weeks pregnant. Now 2 years old, her son, Mito, attends daycare while Azhary is at her lab. Her husband, meanwhile, works in Malaysia to support the family. Money became so tight her parents offered to sell their home.

“The CWAJ scholarship not only changed my life, it changed my son’s life, my husband’s life, my family back home,” says Azhary. “A lot of people’s lives.”

Visit the Women’s Group page to learn more about the organization’s charitable support.

Words: Nick Narigon
Image: Kayo Yamawaki