Materia Medica Malaysiana

Public health lab gets RM5m to fight newly-emerging diseases

From the NST

DEWAN NEGARA, June 30: THE Health Ministry has allocated RM5 million to upgrade facilities at
the National Public Health Laboratory to deal with newly-emerging diseases.


Health Ministry Parliamentary Secretary S. Sothinathan said the facility would be equipped to handle epidemics.

Replying to Wee Kok Tiong, he said the Government had formulated protocols to deal with the outbreak of contagious diseases.

Sothinathan said a document, entitled "National Infectious Disease, Preparedness and Rapid Response", would be used in dealing with such an outbreak.

To a supplementary question from Wee, he said Malaysia had only five probable Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome cases which was 0.06 per cent of the number reported globally.

Of the five cases, with the last reported on April 24, four were Malaysians. There were also two deaths.

Sothinathan said all five cases were categorised as "imported" — victims contracting the disease during their visits to other countries.