Nowadays, community pharmacist plays an important role in medication counseling, patients’ side effects monitoring and drug information delivery. The need of patient counseling has become a vital part of the pharmacy practice and pharmaceutical care. Through Continuing Pharmacy Education (CPE) program, pharmacists can develop into professions in different areas including drug delivery, drug information, technology and patient education. This study was conducted to evaluate the perception of community pharmacists towards patient counseling and continuing education program in Sabah and Sarawak, East Malaysia. A cross-sectional study design utilizing questionnaires was prepared by an extensive literature review. The research was carried out in four major areas in Sarawak; Sibu, Kuching, Bintulu and Miri and in three major areas Sabah; Kota kinabalu, Sepilok, Tawau by convenience sampling method. Descriptive analysis was conducted using SPSS version 18. Perception of community pharmacists towards patients counseling and continuing education program was analysed using scaling method. A cut-off score of 25.8 was used to indicate the perception of community pharmacists. The Pharmacists scored a cut-off point of 25.8 and above were considered to have good perception. A sample of 174 community pharmacists from Sabah and Sarawak were participated in this study. All of the respondents except one had positive perception towards patient counseling and continuing education program. Overall, almost all the community pharmacists had positive perception towards patient counseling and continuing education program in Sabah and Sarawak, East Malaysia. Further research is needed to evaluate perception of community pharmacists in different states of Malaysia and explore more on continuing education program in Malaysia.

Objective: To identify the predicting factors that contribute to knowledge, attitude and practices relating to Zika virus infection among the general public in Malaysia. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a validated self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive analysis was done for participants' socio-demographic profile. Contingency table analysis was done to analyse the associations between knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) scores and socio-demographic profile. A Bonferroni-corrected P-value was used to find the significance of the associations and multiple comparisons were performed in a single data set. To determine the linear relationship between each independent variable and the dependent variable, Spearman rank correlation was performed. Cohen's correlation coefficient was evaluated to determine the strength of the effect size. Multiple correlations and regression analyses were performed to identify independent variables that predicts the dependent variable. Results: Multiple correlation analyses were conducted between respondents' KAP score and independent variables (Age >60 years; Female gender; Selangor state; At least 1 pregnant woman per household). The independent variables such as 'Female gender', 'Selangor state' and 'At least 1 pregnant woman per household' were positively and significantly correlated with KAP score whereas, age >60 years was negatively and significantly correlated with the KAP scores. Conclusions: There were associations between four independent factors and the KAP scores, while only three factors contributed to changes in KAP scores among the public. Among these contributing factors, respondents' age group was the strongest predictor.