By Sulaiman Dayat Syarif
KUALA LUMPUR, 1 June 2022: The Health Ministry will launch a national health screening initiative this July to detect non-communicable diseases (NCD), Health Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin said.
According to The Star report, Khairy said the ministry aims to provide 1.5 million people above the age of 40 who never had health screenings with free health screenings – including faecal occult blood stool testing (FOCB) for colorectal cancer and breast cancer screening at public and private clinics.
“We have now to look at the huge backlog of medical, surgical procedures that we have delayed over the last two years and one of them is health screenings.
“Our health screening numbers over the last two years just simply dropped,” he said while speaking at the 75th Session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) Strategic Roundtable on Behavioural Sciences for Better Health in Geneva on Tuesday.
According to the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS), one out of five adults or 3.9 million people aged 18 and above in Malaysia suffer from diabetes; three out of 10 or 6.4 million people have high blood pressure, and four out of 10 people or eight million people suffer from high cholesterol.
Khairy said that behavioural science is now the first line of defence in Malaysia’s health system because it played a big role in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
“If we can get the people to change the way they live, you will safeguard your healthcare system and we saw behavioural science play an insightful role in the pandemic,” he said.
Khairy also stated that his ministry is considering expanding the usage of its MySejahtera app for NCD, including health screening appointment bookings.
He shared Malaysia’s experience and success on how behavioural science supported national responses to COVID-19 and touched on three main focuses of behavioural science: trust and clear communication, putting actionable instructions, and designing nudges.
The WHA, the main governing body of the World Health Organisation (WHO), is a yearly event that brings together health ministers, health directors-general and industry experts, to come to a consensus on the implementation of WHOs policies, programmes, direction, commitments, and new strategies on healthcare. ***
Source: The Star