Environmental and Health Impacts of Pesticide-Based Malaria Control in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review Introduction Malaria remains a major public health challenge in tropical and subtropical regions, necessitating effective vector control strategies. This scoping review aims to evaluate the environmental and health impacts of pesticide-based malaria control in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). Methods A comprehensive search was conducted across Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed for studies published between 2004 and 2024, using a predefined search string based on the PEO framework. Inclusion criteria focused on studies addressing malaria control programmes and their effects on the environment and human health. Data extraction followed PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Results 12 studies were included, most of which focused on indoor residual spraying (IRS) and insecticide-treated nets (ITNs). The review identified significant direct and indirect impacts. While effective in reducing malaria transmission, IRS and ITNs pose substantial risks. Direct health effects included acute poisoning and long-term neurodevelopmental issues linked to pesticide exposure, with residues detected in breast milk. Environmental impacts included soil and water contamination, biodiversity loss and ecological disruption. The overlap of pesticide use in malaria control and agriculture was found to exacerbate insecticide resistance in mosquito populations. Conclusions Pesticide-based malaria control, while crucial, carries significant unintended consequences for human health and the environment. The findings underscore the urgent need for Integrated Vector Management (IVM) strategies that reduce reliance on chemical pesticides, mitigate resistance, and ensure environmental sustainability and public health safety.

Introduction: Air pollutants, including PM2.5, are an increasing threat to public health. Studies have reported the adverse effect of PM2.5 exposures during pregnancy on neurodevelopment in children. We performed a narrative review using the PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus databases from 2017 to 2022 using keywords such as prenatal, particulate matter, neurodevelopment, and children. This review aims to identify symptoms of impaired neurodevelopment in children associated with prenatal PM2.5 exposure, the association between the timing of prenatal exposure PM2.5 and symptoms of impaired neurodevelopment in children as well as other factors that may influence the association of prenatal PM2.5 exposure and symptoms of impaired neurodevelopment in children Methods: A total of 25 articles were included in this review. Results: Symptoms of neurodevelopmental impairment associated with prenatal exposure to PM2.5 include language, speech, and communication symptoms; motor skills; behaviour and social skills; memory as well as learning/cognitive symptoms. Neurodevelopmental impairments were associated with exposure to PM2.5 across all three trimesters with impairment in communication and behavioural domains predominating in those exposed during the first trimester. Conclusions Generally, males were more susceptible to having neurodevelopmental impairment symptoms compared to females. More information regarding the effect of prenatal PM2.5 exposure on neurodevelopmental domains of children will support public health policies that reduce air pollution and improve children’s health.

Introduction: Home-based maternal records were first designed for better monitoring during pregnancy, delivery, and the postpartum period. There are various studies that reported on the benefits of paper handheld record for mothers in across regions. However, majority of the studies on paper handheld record or home-based record were mainly addressing the benefit and very scare on the challenges faced by the users. This study aims to evaluate the benefits and challenges of the maternal paper handheld to users particularly to mothers and healthcare providers in Southeast Asia (SEA) region Methods: Articles were searched from Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed using relevant keywords based on the review topic. Based on PRISMA guidelines, the search results were then screened based on inclusion criteria: published between 2012 and 2021in English language, available in full text, open access, and conducted in Southeast Asia. Six articles were included in the final analysis, which were also appraised for their quality Results: There are six articles included in this review. Majority of the studies highlighted the benefits of paper handheld records to mothers. Upon further analysis, there are three major themes emerged from the outcome namely mother’s knowledge, maternal health service utilization and breastfeeding practice. Only one study reported on the challenges faced by mothers and care provider while utilising the paper handheld record. Conclusions The paper handheld maternal record implementation in SEA exhibited great positive impact to the mothers in terms of knowledge, maternal health service utilization and breastfeeding practice. Nonetheless, it is quite difficult to find studies that addressed the challenges faced by the users in SEA region. It would be best to understand the challenges faced regionally or even locally to make improvement of the maternal health service as it needs to be comprehensive and suited with the local context.

Introduction: Taxing sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) is one of many other best strategies to reduce consumption of SSB among populations. It is known that SSB consumption is the main contributor which cause obesity and further lead to non-communicable diseases. This study aimed to gather the evidence on the effectiveness of sugar-sweetened beverages tax implementation, in terms of health outcome and healthcare cost benefit. Methods: A systematic review was done related to literature that reported about effectiveness of sugar-sweetened beverages tax implementation, in terms of health outcome and healthcare cost benefit. Four databases were used to identify the literature, namely PubMed, Cochrane, Scopus and Ovid and Medline. PRISMA flow checklist was used as a guide to search for the eligible articles. Results: In total, there were sixteen eligible articles included in this systematic review. All studies are simulation studies. Results showed that both excise and ad valorem tax are effective to reduce healthcare costs and could avert diseases related to high sugar intake. Other than that, it is proven that implementing tax will gain favorable health outcome rather than do nothing. Better results seen when the tax is increased. Conclusion As a conclusion, SSB tax is proven as an effective public health intervention in terms of giving benefit to the health outcome and healthcare cost

Worldwide, around 8 million people die yearly due to tobacco usage. Cigarette smoking is the most popular form of tobacco usage. Smoking has linked to many detrimental health effects among adults and adolescents. Recognising the burden of smoking, World Health Organization have implemented various tobacco control strategies under the Framework Convention of Tobacco Control and mPOWER. This includes implementation of plain packaging and pictorial warning. In Asia, only Thailand, Singapore, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel have implemented plain cigarette pack. However, some countries have made progress to implement plain cigarette pack. Although some countries have not implemented plain pack, implementation of larger pictorial warning serve as a pathway for implementation of plain packaging. Countries with pictorial warning on cigarette pack should ensure it covers at least 50% of pack. Timor Leste has the largest pictorial warning on cigarette pack in the world. In conclusion, only 5 countries in Asia have implemented plain pack and some countries in this region are yet to implement size of pictorial warning according to requirement of World Health Organization. All countries should target to implement standardized pack to denormalise tobacco usage.

Introduction: The average incidence of spina bifida (SB) in Malaysia is 0.43 among 1,000 live births. The burden of the disease and its impact on the overall development and health though tremendously improved, remains significant. Therefore, current patient management strategies must include quality of life (QOL) measures. Methods: This was a prospective, cross-sectional study on spina bifida children aged 5-20 years, attending the paediatric spina bifida clinics of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre Kuala Lumpur and Hospital Tuanku Jaanku Seremban. Scores were obtained using the validated disease specific Parkin QOL questionnaire. Univariate and multivariate analysis were used to investigate factors that were determinants for these outcomes. Results were expressed as beta coefficient and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI). Results: A total of 54 children and adolescents aged between 5-20 years completed the questionnaires. Presence of neurogenic bowel (p=0.003), neurogenic bladder (p=0.041), shunt (p=0.044), non-ambulators (p=0.007) and being the only child in the family (p=0.037) were associated with lower QOL scores. Multivariate analysis showed presence of neurogenic bowel (β=0.375, 95%CI: 0.00, 0.15) and being the only child in the family (β=0.250, 95%CI: 0.04, 0.17) explained 22.1% of the variance in the QOL mean percentage scores. Conclusion: Being a single child in the family was the only socio-demographic variable associated with lower QOL scores. Although several clinical factors appeared to contribute significantly to QOL in spina bifida children, the presence of neurogenic bowel had the greatest impact.

Healthcare workers typically work in shift to ensure smooth operation of healthcare industries around the clock. However, working in shift put them at risk of developing occupational fatigue and sleepiness during and after work, with multiple adverse effects to themselves and patients under their care. This review aims to identify available evidence-based intervention for fatigue and sleepiness among healthcare workers working in shift. We searched PubMed, Scopus and CENTRAL database from January 2013 to December 2017. Selection criteria included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that investigated the effect of any interventions on fatigue and/or sleepiness among shift workers. Two authors independently screened titles and abstracts for relevant studies, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias. We included 8 relevant trials with 7 review-relevant participants. Given the methodological diversity of the included studies in terms of interventions and assessment tools, it is not possible to determine the effectiveness of these interventions to reduce occupational fatigue or sleepiness among healthcare workers working in shift. More good quality RCTs with comparable assessment tools is needed.

In Malaysia, dialysis-treated end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients have been increasing rapidly. Haemodialysis (HD) and continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD) use a disproportionately large amount of limited healthcare resources. This study aims to estimate the costs of HD and CAPD from the Ministry of Health (MOH) perspective. One year prospective multicentre study was conducted from October 2016 to September 2017 to assess direct medical costs of 90 HD patients and 73 CAPD patients from five large MOH dialysis centres. A mixed method of activity-based costing and step-down was used. The capital costs included land, building, medical equipment and furnishing. The recurrent costs included staff emoluments, facility utilities, patients’ medical costs and dialysis consumables. One-way sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate variability in the data. One hundred and forty-one patients (82%) completed the study comprising of 77 patients on HD and 64 patients on CAPD. Majority of the patients were between 46-65 years old (n=75, 53.2%). The most common aetiology of ESRD was diabetes mellitus (44.2% in HD and 48.4% in CAPD). Cost per patient per year was RM39,790 for HD and RM37,576 for CAPD. The main cost drivers were staff emoluments (37.6%) and dialysis consumables (70.5%) for HD and CAPD respectively. HD is highly sensitive towards all the variables analysed except for dialysis consumables. In CAPD, there are minimal sensitivities except for the 5% discount rate. Knowledge of the costs of modalities are useful in the context of planning for dialysis services and to optimise the number of kidney failure patients treated by dialysis within the MOH.
Haemodialysis ; continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis ; end stage renal disease ; cost ; Malaysia

Background: The availability of obesity specific quality of life measurement tool is limited. The Malay version of Impact of Weight on Quality of Life-Lite is an obesity specific quality of life questionnaire which has been translated for use in Malaysia. The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity and reliability of this tool to measure quality of life among different body mass index (BMI) groups.Methods: One hundred and twenty subjects with different BMI categories attending an outpatient government clinic participated in this study. The translated Malay version of IWQOL-Lite was used for assessment. The validity of this questionnaire was examined using content validity, criterion validity and construct validity. Reliability analyses used in this study were internal consistencies and test-retest reliability. Results: The Malay version of IWQOL-Lite showed good psychometric properties whereby the content validity was sufficient as measured by expert panels. The mean score of all IWQOL-Lite domains were able to discriminate between different BMI groups. Good internal consistency was demonstrated by Cronbach alpha of 0.936. Test-retest reliability ranged from 0.828 to 0.932. The physical function score (IWQOL-Lite) correlated positively with Physical Component Summary of Short Form-36 questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis found that the questions loaded on five domains. Conclusion: The results suggest that the Malay version of IWQOL-Lite is a valid and reliable tool to measure quality of life among obese and overweight subjects in Malaysia.

Introduction: The transboundary smoke haze has become a major concern as it had a wide ranging impact in Southeast Asia from the aspect of public health to national economics. This review aims to synthesize available literature in epidemiology, economics and haze related studies to provide essential information for the valuation of health costs associated with haze in Malaysia. Methods: Evidence on health economic impact of haze was gathered by conducting a literature review and collecting information on the health effects of haze and the cost of it as well as the hospitalization cost from medical illnesses and hospital admissions due to haze. Articles were taken from those that were published from 1999 to 2016.Results: The 1997 Asian Haze episode has caused increasing trend of prematurity of mortality and respiratory problems and several series of haze later had caused increased number of hospitalization. The cost impact on hospital admission ranges from MYR1.8 million in 2005 to MYR118.9 million in 2013. During the 1997 haze, the incremental cost of illness (COI) was noted to be MYR 21million and it shot up to MYR 410 million during the 2013 haze. Conclusion: The haze gives a serious health effect to our country and our neighbours. These health effect has caused a significant health economy impact which include rise in hospital admission cost and medication, incremental cost of illness and extend to cost of medical-related leaves taken and lead to loss of income opportunities.