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Fulltext A Qualitative Investigation on the Roles of Social Support on Physical Activity Behaviour among the Rural-Dwelling Older Women in Malaysia

Marthammuthu T, Hairi FM, Choo WY, Salleh NAM, Hairi NN

Int J Environ Res Public Health, 2021 09 12;18(18).
PMID: 34574533 DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18189609

Despite many health benefits of physical activities, both physically and mentally, the majority of the older women in the rural areas of Malaysia are showing a low prevalence of physical activities. Understanding the roles of social support to improve physical activities is imperative to promote active and healthy ageing among the rural-dwelling older women in Malaysia. Hence, this qualitative study adopted an inductive design using 17 in-depth interviews to understand the role of social support on physical activity behaviour among the rural community-dwelling older woman in Kuala Pilah District, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia from December 2019 to January 2020. Three categories of themes were identified in this study. Firstly, adaptive social support in terms of informational, companionship and emotional supports reported enhancing physical activity levels among older women. Secondly, the absence of help and assistance from the social network asserts independence and triggers the older women to perform the activities by themselves, thus engage in physically active lifestyles. Thirdly, lacking social support demotivate older women to be engaged in physical activities. In particular, loss of companionship support, poor acceptance or appraisal support, logistic issues to attend exercise programmes and neighbourhood safety and security issues were among the main barriers of physical activities reported by the older women. The main findings of this study shed some light on the exigency of strengthening social support from the social network to engage the older women in physical activities. The roles of social media, effective patient-doctor communication and interventions targeting the spouses and family members must be strengthened to create a supportive atmosphere to enhance physical activity levels among older women.
The Prevalence and Association Between Social Support and Physical Activity Among the Rural Community-Dwelling Older Women in a Southeast Asian Country

Marthammuthu T, Hairi FM, Choo WY, Salleh NAM, Naqiah Hairi N

J Aging Phys Act, 2023 Aug 01;31(4):611-620.
PMID: 36649719 DOI: 10.1123/japa.2022-0201

While physical activity ensures healthy aging, rural community-dwelling older women tend to be more physically inactive compared with their counterparts in Malaysia. As social support is one of the key determinants of physical activity, this retrospective, cross-sectional study investigated the prevalence of physical activity and its association with social support among 1,221 rural community-dwelling older women in Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. The prevalence of physical activity among older women was 45.1% with the highest prevalence reported for housework domain (52.3%). The total mean Duke Social Support index score was 27.24 ± 3.40. Multivariate analysis reported age, employment status, and income level to demonstrate significant association with the physical activity after adjusting for confounders. Older women with an increase in social interaction score were more likely (odds ratio = 1.22; 95% confidence interval [1.10, 1.34]; p < .001) to have high physical activity when adjusted for sociodemographic, health, mental health, and physical disability. Contrarily, older women with an increase in one subjective social support score were less likely (odds ratio = 0.91; 95% confidence interval [0.87, 0.96]; p < .001) to have high physical activity when adjusted for confounders. The findings were insightful to tailor interventions on promoting social support for physical activity enhancement among older women.
Fulltext Implementation of a COVID-19 surveillance programme for healthcare workers in a teaching hospital in an upper-middle-income country

Wan KS, Tok PSK, Yoga Ratnam KK, Aziz N, Isahak M, Ahmad Zaki R, et al.

PLoS One, 2021;16(4):e0249394.
PMID: 33852588 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249394

INTRODUCTION: The reporting of Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) mortality among healthcare workers highlights their vulnerability in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Some low- and middle-income countries have highlighted the challenges with COVID-19 testing, such as inadequate capacity, untrained laboratory personnel, and inadequate funding. This article describes the components and implementation of a healthcare worker surveillance programme in a designated COVID-19 teaching hospital in Malaysia. In addition, the distribution and characteristics of healthcare workers placed under surveillance are described.
MATERIAL AND METHODS: A COVID-19 healthcare worker surveillance programme was implemented in University Malaya Medical Centre. The programme involved four teams: contact tracing, risk assessment, surveillance and outbreak investigation. Daily symptom surveillance was conducted over fourteen days for healthcare workers who were assessed to have low-, moderate- and high-risk of contracting COVID-19. A cross-sectional analysis was conducted for data collected over 24 weeks, from the 6th of March 2020 to the 20th of August 2020.
RESULTS: A total of 1,174 healthcare workers were placed under surveillance. The majority were females (71.6%), aged between 25 and 34 years old (64.7%), were nursing staff (46.9%) and had no comorbidities (88.8%). A total of 70.9% were categorised as low-risk, 25.7% were moderate-risk, and 3.4% were at high risk of contracting COVID-19. One-third (35.2%) were symptomatic, with the sore throat (23.6%), cough (19.8%) and fever (5.0%) being the most commonly reported symptoms. A total of 17 healthcare workers tested positive for COVID-19, with a prevalence of 0.3% among all the healthcare workers. Risk category and presence of symptoms were associated with a positive COVID-19 test (p<0.001). Fever (p<0.001), cough (p = 0.003), shortness of breath (p = 0.015) and sore throat (p = 0.002) were associated with case positivity.
CONCLUSION: COVID-19 symptom surveillance and risk-based assessment have merits to be included in a healthcare worker surveillance programme to safeguard the health of the workforce.

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