Materia Medica Malaysiana

New ways to tackle ‘ballooning’ problem

KOTA BELUD: Faced with a literally ballooning problem of more overweight Malaysians, the Health Ministry is taking a different approach in getting people to lead healthy lives.

Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said current campaigns were largely targeting the “converted,” who were already practising healthy lifestyles.

“The programmes that we have been doing have not been really effective. We are going to reach out to schoolchildren and we will also use television more to send out the message,” he said yesterday after opening a RM500,000 haemodialysis centre at the district hospital here.

He also said there were about 2,500 new end-stage renal failure patients in the country every year, who would require haemodialysis treatments thrice a week. This health problem was brought about by diabetes, hypertension and infection.

“We need to send the message home that the people must take the responsibility for their own bodies and not leave it to God and their doctors only,” Dr Chua said, adding that 25% of Malaysians were overweight.

He said three out of every 10 Malaysians were suffering from hypertension while 8% were diabetic.

“It would be more prudent for the Government to effectively promote a healthy lifestyle among the people instead of building more and more dialysis centres,” Dr Chua said.

He added that of the 10,000 people nationwide, who needed to go for dialysis, 40% did so at hospitals, 35% at centres run by NGOs and 25% at centres operated by the private sector.

He said the Government was spending as much as RM20,000 per patient to provide haemodialysis treatments at hospitals and subsidised RM8,000 for every person seeking treatment at NGOs centres.

He revealed that 45 district hospitals in the country would be equipped with at least four dialysis machines each by the middle of next year at a cost of RM30mil.