Materia Medica Malaysiana

Ensuring healthy children by remaining vigilant

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will continue to be vigilant of new threats facing children despite ranking second in its efforts to reduce under-five child mortality rates in a United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) report.

Health Ministry family health development director Datuk Dr Narimah Awin said it was important to counter existing problems to avoid recurrence and new threats such as obesity, over-nutrition, mental illness, HIV/AIDS, disabilities and injuries.

“There is always room for improvement although we have achieved all these.

“There are always problems like obesity and over-nutrition. Our children are not underweight. We don’t want them to be obese and have them develop hypertension when they are adults,” she said yesterday after launching the Unicef “Progress for Children” Global Report (Vol 1 2004).

According to the progress report, Malaysia achieved an 8% rate of reduction for under-five child mortality rate in the last decade.

Malaysia ranks first in the East Asia and Pacific region and second in the world. Malta tops the list with 8.6%.

Both countries’ accomplishments surpass developed nations like Norway (6.8%) and Denmark (6.8%).

Malaysia is also one of 13 countries in the region that is on track to meet its obligation in reducing under-five mortality rates by 2015.

Dr Narimah said more children were experiencing mental illness, which resulted from modern living.

The second National Health and Morbidity Survey 1996 showed that 13.6% of children below the age of 12 suffered from mental illness.

“This is something to worry about. Children do have depression and anxiety but the numbers are no different from other countries,” she said adding that domestic violence and gender-based situations contributed to the problem.

The ministry, Dr Narimah added, had started intervention and health education programmes at its clinics.

Among other things, the ministry is changing its way of treating illnesses like allowing patients to see doctors at clinics instead of going to hospitals, prevention by having counselling services and early detection.