Objective: Truancy is a disciplinary problem, which frequently occurs among school students and it has many contributory as well as inter-related factors. It is a growing problem in this country and it often becomes a prelude to other delinquent behaviours. The study objective is to determine the prevalence of truancy as well as factors related to it including psycho-behavioural factors. Methods: A cross-sectional study involving 556 Malay student’s selected using multi-stage sampling was conducted. Results: The overall prevalence of truancy is 30.2%. The predictors to truancy are age, students who frequenting entertainment centre, students who have not completed Quran recital, coping strategies using problems solving methods and time spent watching television/video. There is a significant association between truancy and psycho-behaviour such as watching video/internet pornography, frequenting entertainment centre, smoking, motorcycle racing and dating a special friend. Conclusion: Truancy is a social issue, which must be given serious attention by all concerned components of the society.

Introduction: Immunosuppressive state due to haematological malignancies and chemotherapy may cause disruption to wound healing despite optimum conventional treatment and standard wound dressing. Non-healing wounds are predisposed to infection whereas chemotherapy dose reductions or interruptions are associated with poor survival. Background: Mononuclear cells contain progenitor cells including haematopoietic and mesenchymal stem cells, endothelial progenitor cells and fibroblasts which facilitate wound healing through cytokines, growth factor secretions, cell-cell interactions and provision of extracellular matrix scaffolding. Clinical applications of autologous mononuclear cells therapy in wound healing in non-malignant patients with critical limb ischaemia have been reported with remarkable outcome. Methods: We report three patients with haematological malignancies undergoing chemotherapy, who received autologous mononuclear cells implantation to treat non-healing wound after optimum conventional wound care. The sources of mononuclear cells (MNC) were from bone marrow (BM), peripheral blood (PB) and mobilised PB cells (mPB-MNC) using granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF). The cells were directly implanted into wound and below epidermis. Wound sizes and adverse effects from implantation were assessed at regular intervals. Results: All patients achieved wound healing within three months following autologous mononuclear cells implantation. No implantation adverse effects were observed. Conclusions: Autologous mononuclear cells therapy is a feasible alternative to conventional wound care to promote complete healing in non-healing wounds compounded by morbid factors such as haematological malignancies, chemotherapy, diabetes mellitus (DM), infections and prolonged immobility.

Prior to COVID-19, dengue was an important public health problem in Malaysia. Due to the movement control order imposed by the Malaysian government to curb the COVID-19 transmission, a study predicted that mosquito-borne diseases would increase during lockdown and partial lockdown seasons. Thus, this study aims to determine the current situation of dengue incidence during the pre-COVID-19 pandemic (2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and 2021). We compared the number of laboratory-confirmed cases in the pre-COVID19 year (2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 and 2021). In addition to that, we characterized the clinical manifestation, dengue serotype and viremia levels of dengue patients that were admitted to the Hospital Cancelor Tuanku Muhriz. We found a significant decrease in the number of laboratory-confirmed cases between COVID-19 pandemic and the pre-covid period (p2020=0.064; p2021<0.001). In this study, we found DENV 4 serotype was the most common serotype in dengue patients admitted to our hospital. There was no significant correlation between DENV serotype/viremia level with clinical manifestation of dengue fever and dengue with warning signs. However, patients infected with DENV4 had the highest viral load compared to patients infected with other serotypes. We also found high viremia levels were significantly associated with the febrile phase.