Abstracts For The 1st International Borneo Healthcare And Public Health Conference And 4th Borneo Tropical Medicine And Infectious Disease Congress. Held at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia On 3rd-5th September 2019
Introduction: Laboratory screening tests are common elements of health care. Comprehensive care of patients is dependent on the results of laboratory investigations. Dissemination of knowledge and improving attitude of com-munity for utilization of laboratory services are utmost important in community health care. This study aimed to assess the knowledge and utilization of the laboratory services among the employees of University Malaysia Sabah, determine their expectations of employees on the medical laboratory services.
Methods: A total of 200 UMS staff participated. The data were collected using a cross-sectional self-administered questionnaires and descriptive data analysis was done.
Results: 5% of the participants in this study agreed to have the health check and blood screening tests every year. Less than 10% of respondents agreed to do more frequent blood tests check if they are at high risk such as family history of cancer, hypertension and diabetes 181 out of 200 respondents do not agree that doing laboratory tests can help for early diagnosis of some diseases. The most used laboratory tests were plasma sugar (70.8%), blood grouping (60.4%), urine examination (50%) and serum lipid (46%).
Conclusion: Based on the results, recommendations were made to improve the knowledge, attitude and utilization of the laboratory services and set up laboratory services easily accessible by the university community. This will lead to positive health benefits in people and improve associated health outcomes.
Escherichia coli (E. coli) is one of the most frequent causes of many bacterial infections especially
gastroenteritis in developing countries. It is also used as an indicator for faecal pollution in the
surveillance of bacteriological quality of drinking water. This study was conducted to determine the
survival of E. coli in water at room temperature (27oC). E. coli which is cultured in Lactose Peptone Broth
was inoculated into 8 bottles each containing 10 millilitres of distilled water. They were kept at 27oC.
Starting from the day 1, ten-fold dilutions were made from each bottle number and E. coli count was
done from each dilutions by using pour plate method. The colony forming unit/ millilitre (CFU/ml) was
calculated. The same procedure was carried out from bottles number 2 to 8 from day 2 to day 8
consecutively. CFU/ml of E. coli in dilution 10-5was markedly decreased from 3.9 x 106
in day 1to 0 in
day 8. The findings suggest that if the water is contaminated with low number of E. coli, it can be
eliminated by keeping water at room temperature for only few days.
An outbreak of dengue in Kudat, northern Sabah in 2016-2017 provided an opportunity to investigate the circulating serotypes of dengue viruses of cases at Hospital Kudat. Between September 2016 and December 2017, a total of 156 dengue positive sera (tested positive by either NS1 antigen, or IgM and IgG antibody rapid test) were collected from dengue patients who had acute fever and showed signs and symptoms suggestive of dengue. RNA was extracted from the sera using QIAamp RNA Blood Mini Kit, and molecular amplification was performed using one-step RT-PCR kit, followed by nested PCR using HotStart Taq master mix kit with the primers of the dengue C-prM gene. There were 81 (52%) male and 75 (48%) female cases. The age group with the highest number of cases was the 10-19 years old, while the youngest infected was 8 months old and the oldest was 83 years old. RT-PCR results showed 88 sera dengue positive, 48 infected with a single serotype while another 40 with multiple serotypes. All four DENV serotypes were co-circulating during the outbreak period and DENV-1 was predominant. Molecular analysis also indicated 69.2%, 50.0%, 51.9% and 48.9% respectively of the NS1, IgM, IgG and IgM and IgG positive sera were RT-PCR positive for dengue. High number of cases were seen in December 2016, February and May 2017. The dengue outbreak might be related to switching of predominant serotype from DENV 4 to DENV 1.