Health
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Health
Mother’s Day walk against cancer
Dr Daren Teoh is unhappy. Sabah has been missing 900 new breast cancer patients every year. And he fears that they might have sought the wrong treatment or none at all and died too soon. There should be 1,200 of them based on the world's average. But hospitals record only 300.
0Health
A mountain of hope
Dental health
Fluoride in water to fight tooth decay
It was stopped 22 years ago over fears that fluoride in drinking water could endanger health and ruin the environment. But the Sabah government will restart its fluoridation programme at year end, according to Joseph Pairin Kitingan, a deputy chief minister who takes charge of infrastructure development. The reasons: fluoridation does not endanger nature and it has been proven safe to keep teeth healthy on the peninsula; but almost everyone of the Borneo island state's 3.2m people suffers from poor dental health.
First aid
The kiss of life
Deputy chief minister Yahya Hussin knows how helpless and desperate one can be in a medical emergency. A few years ago a friend collapsed as he was playing badminton with him at Putatan, his electoral constituency. “We didn't know what to do,” he says. “We just kipas (fanned) him with whatever we had. None of us knew cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).” That experience has driven home in him the importance of knowing first aid. So happily the minister of agriculture and food industry launched the first free first aid training programme for 50 pupils of the SMK Putatan (government secondary school) on April 23.
Palliative care
Home for the dying gets crowded
It began in 1995 with four beds to help cancer patients live the remaining days of their life meaningfully and die with dignity. Thus was born Malaysia's first palliative care unit at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Kota Kinabalu. It has since become a model for others in the country. Six beds were added the next year and the Palliative Care Association of Kota Kinabalu was registered as a charitable organisation in 1998. It now wants a 2m ringgit ($670,000) expansion of its Rumah PCA (Palliative home) because it has become too small for its work that complements the government hospice.
Health and social welfare
When a lass isn’t a lass
To the Lions of Kota Kinabalu, a lass isn't a young woman. It's the name, or rather an acronym, of their non-government organisation to provide a much needed free ambulance service to the people in Kota Kinabalu. The Lions Ambulance Service Society (LASS) has just roared out its first ambulance at a cost of 200,000 ringgit ($66,000). It has two trained men nurses and enough life-saving equipment in the ambulance to help keep accident victims alive while its driver rushes them to hospital. A receptionist answers the telephone.
Health
Najib’s healthcare blessing for 1.5m people
It was a feat. In two months Malaysia's health ministry set up 44 1Malaysia clinics all over the country. Prime minister Najib Razak set aside 10m ringgit ($3.3m) for 50 of them when he presented his maiden 2010 budget in October 2009. These clinics are meant to bring medical treatment to the doorstep of largely low-income earners in suburbs. There are now 78 of them that have treated 1.5m people of minor ailments such as headaches and colds. And their popularity is growing.
Breast cancer
The killer can be stopped
The statistics are frightening, according to Azizah Dun, minister of community development and consumers affairs. Breast cancer strikes one out of every 19 Malaysian women. In Sabah, it accounted for slightly more than one-third of 364 cancers last year. But the disease can be stopped. Dayang Rohani, 57, has survived it for 25 years. So have many like her. The key to their survival is early detection.
World Heart Day
Stay alive, keep it beating
Life stops when the heart stops. Beating 100,000 times a day, the heart keeps a person alive for about 75 years in Malaysia; for some, a little longer. Yet the heart is stopping sooner. Heart attacks are Malaysia's No. 1 killer accounting for 16% of deaths in hospitals. In Sabah, about 338 or 6.1% of the 5,549 medically certified deaths in 2007 were caused by heart attacks. Doctors say unreported cases could be very much higher. Like most doctors Dr Liew Houng Beng, Sabah's chief cardiologist, says heart diseases can be prevented by changing the way we live. But is anyone listening?
Health and social welfare
A gritty life in a wheelchair
Five-year-old Natalya Natasha Sapinggar's wheelchair is called “Rough Rider”. Life for the handicapped is certainly not smooth. And the wheelchair, of course, is a blessing for Natalya and those who live in a half-size world in which most of what is reachable is no longer so. Natalya suffers from hydrocephalus (water on the brain) which makes it difficult for her to walk. “She is now 21kg (46 pounds),” says her policeman father Wilson, 34. “She will be too heavy for us to carry her all the time. I'm happy that she now has a wheelchair”
Health
Pink Ribbon in Kota Kinabalu
Five years ago, Lucilla Pang was devastated to know that she had cancer in her left breast. Her world tumbled. She locked herself in her room for three days. But what saddened her most was to see five of her friends lose their life needlessly to breast cancer in the last five years. And so she has set up the Kinabalu Breast Cancer Support Association or Kinabalu Pink Ribbon to make women aware of the disease and to support patients and survivors.
Medicine
A Thalassaemia dilemma
Jerry bin Losminon, 11, is smart. “I've always scored an A in Malay,” says the primary five pupil. He looks healthy and likes playing badminton with his friends. He even dreams of being a world champion. But he tires easily. Jerry is one of Sabah's 1,259 people who suffer from Thalassaemia, an inherited blood disorder that saps their energy. They form the biggest group out of 4,800 patients in Malaysia. Most of them are indigenous Kadazandusuns, Muruts and Rungus in rural Kudat and Kota Marudu, according to state health officials who say keeping their numbers down is a herculean task.
In pictures
Quotes of the Day
We are making Sabah not just a gateway for trade, investment and tourism but a modern, vibrant, prosperous and harmonious place to live.
Prime Minister Najib Razak speaking at the open day of the Sabah Development Corridor in Kota Kinabalu on February 16.