Help contain malaria, Health Ministry tells public

The public have been urged to work hand in hand with the Health Ministry to help curb the malaria outbreak from worsening.

Malaria Elimination Programme senior principle assistant director Dr Ummi Kalthom Shamsudin said information provided by the people can help authorities to identify the hot spots quicker.

“We really need help from the community because we need to tell out public health intelligence. We need the community to tell us we have foreigners among us, because the foreigners come and go.

READ: Perak malaria outbreak: Are foreign workers to be blamed?

“They might be the illegal rubber tappers as in Kelantan or they might be Bangladeshis doing construction works in certain remote areas as happening in Kemar. So we need people to tell us so that we can go in and treat them as soon as possible," she told Astro AWANI here today.

She said Malaysia has been successful in curbing malaria where in 1994, there were 60,000 cases but there were less than 4,000 cases in 2014.

Ironically, this success may also be the reason why the public have forgotten malaria.

“I believe we need to strengthen our management on introduction. We start to forget about malaria, that's why malaria become a forgotten disease.

“People are thinking about dengue, about Zika. That's why we need to strengthen our surveillance and of course with the presence of foreigners around and we are going travelling.

“We need to really look into how to screen and treat them early, because we cannot get rid of all the anopheles in Malaysia. But we must ensure no local transmission occurs, and that the parasites be contained as soon as possible," said Dr Ummi.

Besides Perak, the Kelantan health authorities have also been screen Orang Asli in the state as they are very mobile, she concluded.