1.Childhood Obesity – Prevalence among 7 and 8 year old Primary School Students in Kota Kinabalu
Hon Loon Chong ; Thian Lian Soo ; Rahmah Rasat
The Medical Journal of Malaysia 2012;67(2):147-150
Childhood obesity among school children is currently not a
prevalent health problem in Kota Kinabalu. However, the
complication of childhood obesity is serious. Authorities
should address this problem through the education of parents and children towards living a healthy lifestyle, encompassing teaching of healthy eating habits and encouragement of physical activities in school or leisure time should be promoted among all age groups. Pregnant and lactating women should be given advice on exclusive breast feeding to prevent childhood obesity. Early detection of obesity and hypertension are important. It will be useful to determine what factors in Kota Kinabalu enable a lower prevalence of obesity compared to the higher prevalence areas in the country. This could provide important information to design strategies to reduce obesity among school children nation wide.
2.Parental Knowledge on Nephrotic Syndrome and Disease Relapse in children
Shiau Chuen Diong ; Syed Zulkifli Syed Zakaria ; Rahmah Rasat ; Wan Jazilah Wan Ismail
The Medical Journal of Malaysia 2019;74(4):288-295
Introduction: Parental knowledge on nephrotic syndrome
and disease relapse is important for early recognition and
treatment of relapse to prevent the complications. Parental
knowledge on nephrotic syndrome was reported to be
inadequate from published studies. To date, there is no
study on parental knowledge on childhood nephrotic
syndrome in Malaysia. This study is thus aimed at to
determine the level of knowledge on NS and disease relapse
among parents of children with nephrotic syndrome and
determine factors that influence knowledge on nephrotic
syndrome and disease relapse. Study Design and
Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted in
Paediatric Nephrology Clinic, Hospital Selayang from
November 2016 to November 2017. Seventy-eight parents
were recruited based on universal sampling. Selfadministered questionnaire in Bahasa Malaysia and English
was designed through focus group discussion with five
subject matter experts and validated through content
validity. Data was analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 23.0.
Results: Majority of parents or guardians (91%) were able to
answer more than 50% of the questions correctly. Of these,
56% were able to answer more than 75% of the questions
correctly. A 'cut-off' of 75% was defined as good knowledge.
Parents of children with frequent relapses had higher
parental knowledge and this was statistically significant
(p=0.025).
Conclusion: Parental knowledge on nephrotic syndrome
and disease relapse was still inadequate as only 56%
parents had good knowledge. The main areas of deficit in
parental knowledge were related to medications, infections,
home urine dipstick monitoring, and recognition of warning
signs during relapse.