Long term evaluations of impacts of communitybased health promotion programmes are not an easy orstraightforward task to do due to lack of validated andreliable indices. Objective: To develop and test an indexto measure schoolchildren’s oral health knowledge,attitudes, and behaviour as a result of a school-based healthpromotion programme in Malaysia called the DoktorMuda (Junior Doctor) Programme (DMP). Materials andMethods: The index was developed in English based onthe DMP module and translated into Malay. The Malayversion was tested on 174, 11-12 year old schoolchildren.Psychometric analysis of the index involved content andface validity tests as well as factor analysis, internal andtest-retest reliability. Results: Factor analysis yielded 3factors with groups of items viz. oral health knowledge(OHK), oral health attitudes (OHA) and oral healthbehaviour (OHB). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of thethree factors were 0.61, 0.73, and 0.64, respectively. TheKappa coefficients were 0.70, 0.77 and 0.73, respectively(intraclass correlation coefficients = 0.72, 0.70 and 0.78).The final questionnaire comprised 33 items, namely; OHK11 items, OHA 15 items, and OHB 7 items. Conclusion:The Health Promotion Questionnaire Index (HPQI) tomeasure the DMP impact on schoolchildren’s oral healthknowledge, attitudes, and behaviours was empiricallyverified to be valid and reliable for use among 11-12 yearold Malaysian schoolchildren.

Haemoglobinopathies presenting with erythrocytosis is relatively rare. The clinicians might mistakenly diagnose such patients with other causes of erythrocytosis such as myeloproliferative neoplasm, etc instead of haemoglobinopathies. Here, we described two cases of haemoglobin variant, namely Haemoglobin Johnstown (Hb Johnstown) and Haemoglobin Bethesda (Hb Besthesda) that were detected following various futile investigations for persistent erythrocytosis. For both cases, the two main screening methods used were capillary electrophoresis (CE) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Approximately 30% of the high affinity haemoglobin (Hb) are not detected by electrophoresis method, however, in some cases, a variant Hb peak can be seen in chromatography method. Thus, a high index of suspicion of such diagnosis is utmost important as to not to miss the definitive diagnostic test by DNA analysis.

Introduction: To describe the duration of survival among bone tumour patients with endoprosthesis reconstruction and to determine frequency of implant failure, revision of surgery, and amputation after endoprosthesis reconstruction. Materials and methods: A retrospective cross-sectional review of all patients with either primary bone tumour or secondary bone metastases treated with en bloc resection and endoprosthesis reconstruction from January 2008 to December 2020. Results: A total of 35 failures were recorded among the 27 (48.2%) patients with endoprostheses. Some of the patients suffered from one to three types of modes of failure on different timelines during the course of the disease. Up to eight patients suffered from more than one type of failure throughout the course of the disease. Out of all modes of failure, local recurrence (type 5 failure) was the most common, accounting for 25.0% of all failure cases. Four patients (7.1%) eventually underwent amputation, which were either due to infection (2 patients) or disease progression causing local recurrence (2 patients). Conclusion: The overall result of endoprosthesis reconstruction performed in our centre was compatible with other centres around the world. Moreover, limb salvage surgery should be performed carefully in a selected patient group to maximise the benefits of surgery.

INTRODUCTION: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had an unprecedented impact in Asia and has placed significant burden on already stretched healthcare systems. We examined the impact of COVID-19 on the safety attitudes among healthcare workers (HCWs), as well as their associated demographic and occupational factors, and measures of burnout, depression and anxiety. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey study utilising snowball sampling was performed involving doctors, nurses and allied health professions from 23 hospitals in Singapore, Malaysia, India and Indonesia between 29 May 2020 and 13 July 2020. This survey collated demographic data and workplace conditions and included three validated questionnaires: the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ), Oldenburg Burnout Inventory and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. We performed multivariate mixed-model regression to assess independent associations with the SAQ total percentage agree rate (PAR). RESULTS: We obtained 3,163 responses. The SAQ total PARs were found to be 35.7%, 15.0%, 51.0% and 3.3% among the respondents from Singapore, Malaysia, India and Indonesia, respectively. Burnout scores were highest among respondents from Indonesia and lowest among respondents from India (70.9%-85.4% vs. 56.3%-63.6%, respectively). Multivariate analyses revealed that meeting burnout and depression thresholds and shifts lasting ≥12 h were significantly associated with lower SAQ total PAR. CONCLUSION Addressing the factors contributing to high burnout and depression and placing strict limits on work hours per shift may contribute significantly towards improving safety culture among HCWs and should remain priorities during the pandemic.
Humans ; Cross-Sectional Studies ; Pandemics ; COVID-19/epidemiology* ; Burnout, Psychological ; Health Personnel