Yesterday, the Department was given the opportunity to present at the Faculty of Medicine’s weekly Wednesday Morning Clinical Symposium. The Wednesday Morning Clinical Symposium has been a tradition in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya since almost the beginning. Associate Prof Dr Hazreen Abd Majid, Dr Tharani Loganathan and Dr Mohd Syis Zulkipli represented the department. The unifying theme for the three presentations were children and adolescent.

Dr Mohd Syis Zulkipli a final year Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) candidates shared his DrPH research findings on obesity and the risk of dengue severity. He started with a brief description of the issue of dengue and obesity epidemic in the region, followed by the presentation of his Systematic Review results which identified obesity as a risk for dengue severity among children and adolescents. This was followed by a brief description of his research on other research on retrospective and follow-up study to examine obesity and dengue severity.

Dr Tharani who just join the Department back in December of 2017 shared the findings of her DrPH research. She presented a paper on “An economic evaluation of rotavirus vaccine in Malaysia: Towards informing policy on vaccine introduction”. She presented the economic burden of rotavirus infection in Malaysia. Overall the annual cost for healthcare providers in 2013 is RM105 million and RM156 million from the societal perspective, a third of all the costs are indirect cost and an estimated per child under the age of 5 years is RM61 per year. She also noted that the average direct medical payment made through out-of-pocket did not differ much between income quintiles, however, the poorest paid more out-of-pocket as a proportion of the total monthly income as compared to the richest. She concluded that the poor would benefit the most if Malaysia introduces the national wide vaccination programme for rotavirus.

The final presentation was by Prof Hazreen, his title was “Go Further with Food”. He shared the findings of the MyHeARTs study which is a cohort study that started in 2012 in three states, Selangor, Perak and Kuala Lumpur and would be follow-up until 2026.