Singapore Women's Hall of Fame

Shalini Arulanandam

Military doctor that took on the pandemic

In 1998 when Shalini Arulanandam was just out of junior college, she applied for a Singapore Armed Forces scholarship. 

The 18-year-old was called for an interview, but was told the SAF Local Study Award to study Medicine was not for women. She believed the rule needed to be changed. 

Two days later, Shalini got an offer from the SAF for the scholarship on condition she be accepted into medical school here and pass the Officer Cadet Course. 

Staying fit came naturally to Shalini who was a netball player on the Singapore Combined Schools team, a Netball Super league team and in the netball U-17 national training squad before Basic Military Training. She was also a long distance runner.  

She was named the best cadet at the Officer Cadet School, was accepted to study medicine at the National University of Singapore, and so became the first woman to receive the SAF scholarship to study medicine. 

After 23 years in the military, she also became the first woman to be appointed commander of the SAF Medical Corps' Military Medicine Institute, where she was in charge of all medical centres run by the Singapore Army and the medical screening for servicemen. In 2021, she was promoted to the rank of Colonel.  

“The male leaders and peers I worked with were highly intelligent, driven and great colleagues but generally very strong characters too. I learnt how to wield soft power and hold my own,” she said. 

Shalini is married to a surgeon and they have three children. After graduating from NUS in 2003, she joined the Navy as a medical officer. She served in several appointments there, sailing for naval operations and exercises. 

“I remember during my first overseas deployment back on the ship after the birth of my second child, I was trying to keep up my breast milk supply but had to pump and pour the milk into the sea as there was nowhere to store it properly,” she said. 

In 2015, Shalini completed her speciality training to become an Ear, Nose, and Throat surgeon and spent one year in the UK, where she specialised in disorders of the voice, airway, and swallowing.   

When she returned in the following year, Shalini was appointed Commanding Officer of the Medical Classification Centre in MINDEF. 

In 2018, Shalini was seconded to the SCDF as its Chief Medical Officer for three years. This appointment turned out to be life-changing because of the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.  

She recalled the early days when the SCDF started to deploy its pandemic stockpile, including personal protective equipment such as N95 masks, goggles and gowns to its ambulance crew in the 22 fire stations here.  

Hotline operators had to be briefed on a protocol to help determine if someone was a suspect case, which would trigger the appropriate response. 

Shalini and her team worked to ensure the crew of emergency medical services were mask-fitted and familiar with personal protection and decontamination protocols.  

“When a pandemic is looming, the main thing is to make sure our force is adequately protected because we don’t want any of our crew getting infected and passing on the infection to other patients,” she told Her World magazine in 2020.  

At the peak of the outbreak, the SCDF’s 995 hotline received thousands of calls regarding suspected Covid-19 cases. Its fleet of 83 emergency ambulances, manned by more than 1,400 emergency medical services personnel, transported scores of sick patients to the hospitals.  

The SCDF also conducted swabbing operations for Covid-19 tests, and Shalini herself spent days swabbing foreign workers at their dormitories. 

Shalini described those months as intense because she had signed up to do her MBA at NUS while working. Often she finished work after 9 or 10 at night, and had to catch up with her classes on Zoom. She said she regularly slept for just four hours a night then. 

In 2020, Shalini and seven other women were collectively recognised for their contributions during the challenging period of the Covid pandemic. All eight women were named Her World magazine’s Women of the Year. 

Since October 2023 she has been appointed Chief Medical Officer of the Home Team, in the Ministry of Home Affairs, where her responsibilities include overseeing healthcare policy, delivery of healthcare services, occupational health, and medical grading matters across all the Home Team agencies. 

Shalini is also a Senior Consultant ENT Surgeon at Singapore General Hospital. 

“I'm definitely very grateful for all the little accidents of fate that led me to this point. From asking for a scholarship that didn't exist for women, to saying 'yes' to the various postings, and even the unexpected challenge of Covid-19." – The Straits Times, 2021.