To date, there has been no systematic research that investigates the rural community awareness and attitudes towards pandemic influenza H1N1 and its prevention measures in the context of Sarawak. There is also no systematic study about whether the initiatives to educate the public undertaken by the government and other agencies have empowered the rural communities to practice an effective self-care within the context of community, that assist to curb the potential spread of this disease. Our research aims to address these limitations. In this paper, we report a survey finding about the awareness and attitudes of the Serian community with regard to this area of research interest. We also investigate the relevant sources of information that the community relies on in understanding about the influenza and how it can spread. Overall, the outcomes of the survey reveal that a majority of our respondents has a relatively low level of knowledge and awareness particularly about the characteristics of the illness and how H1N1 virus can transmit. With regard to prevention measures, a majority of them reported good understanding and awareness about the effective self-care practices that can help to curb the potential spread of the influenza. The top five sources to obtain information about the influenza were: information from family, relatives, friends or neighbours; radio; TV; newspapers; and government health talk seminar or campaigns. The research outcomes can offer pragmatic contributions that can benefit the health campaigners and policy makers.
Rural Population ; Influenza, Human ; Pandemics, Malaysia

Malaysia has one of the highest total numbers of COVID-19 infections amongst the Southeast Asian nations, which led to the enforcements of the Malaysian "Movement Control Order" to prohibit disease transmission. The overwhelming increasing amount of infections has led to a major strain on major healthcare services. This leads to shortages in hospital beds, ventilators and critical personnel protective equipment. This article focuses on the critical adaptations from a general surgery department in Malaysia which is part of a Malaysian tertiary hospital that treats COVID-19 cases. The core highlights of these strategies enforced during this pandemic are: (1) surgery ward and clinic decongestions; (2) deferment of elective surgeries; (3) restructuring of medical personnel work force; (4) utilization of online applications for tele-communication; (5) operating room (OR) adjustments and patient screening; and (6) continuing medical education and updating practices in context to COVID-19. These adaptations were important for the continuation of emergency surgery services, preventing transmission of COVID-19 amongst healthcare workers and optimization of medical personnel work force in times of a global pandemic. In addition, an early analysis on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown measures in Malaysia towards the reduction in total number of elective/emergent/trauma surgeries performed is described in this article.
Betacoronavirus ; Coronavirus Infections ; epidemiology ; prevention & control ; Elective Surgical Procedures ; Emergency Treatment ; Humans ; Malaysia ; epidemiology ; Pandemics ; prevention & control ; Pneumonia, Viral ; epidemiology ; prevention & control ; Wounds and Injuries ; surgery

The term and concept of emerging infectious diseases (EID) has been burgeoned out in the early 1990s and EID were expected as the most important public health problems of all of countries and global community as a whole. EID have been confirmed as the most important health and security problems when the global community has been experienced a lot of outbreaks of EID including avian influenza in Hong Kong (1997), Nipah encephalitis in Malaysia and Singapore (1999), and anthrax bioterrorism in U.S.A. (2001), and SARS outbreaks in global community (2003). Pandemic influenza could be a big disaster in global community in the near future in the situation of the occurrence of H5N1 avian influenza and it's human cases in southeastern Asian countries. This paper described the EIDs in terms of two epidemiologic transition theories, and described the important EID in global community since 1970s and reviewed the remarkable emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases in Korea since 1990. Seven factors contributing to EID and the convergence model for EID were introduced. In conclusion, the preparedness and response plan of public health authority the role of epidemiologist was suggested. Especially the cooperative activities between epidemiologists and other field or sector's professionals were emphasized to find out the etiology or risk factors of EID and preparedness and response plan.
Animals ; Anthrax ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Bioterrorism ; Communicable Diseases, Emerging ; Disasters ; Disease Outbreaks ; Encephalitis ; Hong Kong ; Humans ; Influenza in Birds ; Influenza, Human ; Korea ; Malaysia ; Pandemics ; Public Health ; Risk Factors ; Singapore