Introduction: The Ministry of Health Malaysia introduced the national best practices for adolescent-friendly health services in 2018 and it served as an assessment tool in the accreditation of adolescent-friendly clinic status. This study was conducted in Kelantan with the objective to determine the proportion of adolescent-friendly clinics and its determinants and perceptions of healthcare providers regarding the facilitating factors in providing adoles-cent-friendly health services. Methods: The research design was sequential explanatory mixed method. State wide clinics assessment was done to estimate the proportion of adolescent-friendly clinics and to determine the factors associated with adolescent-friendly health services provision. Perceptions of healthcare providers on the facilitating factors for adolescent-friendly health services were explored through in-depth interviews. Descriptive statistics and linear regression analysis were performed for quantitative data, and thematic analysis for qualitative data. Results: Out of 85 health clinics, 30 (35.3%) clinics were accredited as adolescent-friendly. Availability of trained health-care providers in adolescent health modules, private room for adolescent counselling, dedicated team in charge of adolescent programme and adolescent health promotional activities were the statistically significant determinants for adolescent-friendly health services (p
Introduction: Parents of a disabled child might require extra basic needs which most of the time are unmet due to several factors. Thus, understanding the unmet needs could help the respective institution to provide and prioritise the needs required. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted between September to December 2013 to de- termine the proportion of unmet needs among parents of children with disabilities at support institutions in Kelantan, Malaysia. Biological parents of disabled children aged between 2 to 18 years old were included in the study. A 35- item validated Malay version of the Family Needs Survey was used in this study. A scoring of 4-point Likert scale was used; the prevalence of unmet needs was determined based on the proportion of those who scored “3” from each domain. Results: A total of 226 parents were involved in the present study. The mean age of parents and children were 44.6 (8.99) and 10.2 (4.85) years old respectively. The most common type of disabilities was learning disability (n=151, 66.8%). The unmet need for information has the highest prevalence (97.8%), followed by the unmet need for social support (93.8%). Conclusion: Parents with disabled children require information to guide them in managing their children. Findings from this study may better enable policymakers to devote resources in assisting parents, and service providers in designing appropriate interventions in fulfilling the unmet needs of these parents.
Leptospirosis has been reported as an endemic in most tropical countries. Among high risk occupations, leptospirosis includes workers in agriculture and domestic animal industries. Environmental hygiene in the wet market has established a link between the presence of rodents with probability of leptospirosis infection. This study was aimed to compare the level of knowledge, attitude and preventive practice against leptospirosis between healthy Malaysian and non-Malaysian wet market workers in selected wet markets in urban areas of Selangor. A cross-sectional study in the determined area was conducted with the participation of 147 respondents. The respondents were randomly chosen from the list provided by the state agency that regulates these markets. A self-administered bilingual validated questionnaire (English and Bahasa Melayu) was distributed to the selected respondents. There were 68 (48.3%) Malaysian respondents and 79 (53.7%) non-Malaysian respondents. The majority of them were males, who attained formal education and were less than 40 years old. Meanwhile, the respondents earned less than RM3000. Among the Malaysian respondents, 80.9% were aware of leptospirosis as compared to 17.7% of the non-Malaysian colleagues (p < 0.05). All items of knowledge showed that the Malaysian respondents scored higher as compared to non-Malaysian respondents. On attitude towards infection prevention, most Malaysian respondents had a positive attitude, while most non-Malaysian respondents had undecided perception on the majority of crucial attitude items. In practicing preventive measures, there was a marked significant difference in proportion between Malaysian and non-Malaysian respondents for items on "Specific Protection and Isolation at Source." There was a significant gap on knowledge, attitude and preventive practice among Malaysian workers as compared to non-Malaysian workers. Therefore, it was highly recommended the health promotion implementation should also provide specific focus on non-Malaysian workers.