Department of Community Health

Background: Cardiovascular diseases are the major causal factor of morbidity and death rate in the world. Premature death is believed to be associated with heavy metals exposure that should be identified as early at the reversible stage. In electrocardiogram, the P wave is among the suitable indicator. Method: This is a cross sectional study among a population in Selangor, one of the major state in Malaysia. It was carried out from January to December 2012 using purposive sampling to obtain blood samples and electrocardiogram reading. Data on sociodemography was obtained using a standardised validated questionnaire adopted for PURE study. Results: A total of 287 respondents was enrolled in the study, the majority of women aged between 35 to 70 years old. Nearly 52.8% of them have asymptomatic abnormal prolonged P wave. The median of blood Pb was 1.9µg/L (1.0 – 3.3µg/L). The area under curve (AUC) analysis using receiving of curve (ROC) revealed that the concentration of blood Pb of more than 2.9 µg/L associated with prolonged P wave. This point may be used as the cardiotoxicity cut off point of blood Pb among the respondents. The limit was so much lower than the standard of 100.0µg/L that have been adopted purposely to protect neurobehavioural problems. Conclusion: The present legislation limit of blood Pb is not protecting the population from the cardiotoxicity risk. The limit should be reviewed again in reducing premature death and CVDs problems.

The attitudes shown by community towards the mentally ill patient can have implications for recovery. To gather robust evidence regarding community attitudes towards people with mental illness, a data collection is required. A cross sectional study was carried out to examine the community attitudes towards the mentally ill patients and its associated factors in Tampoi Town, Johor among 347 respondents. This study was conducted from June 2012 to June 2013. Community Attitudes towards the Mentally Ill questionnaire was used to examine public attitudes towards the mentally ill patients. Another questionnaire was used to determine media influence and history or experience with the mentally ill patients was administered by a researcher. The community in this town had a positive attitude towards the mentally ill patients. Benevolence attitude which represent the positive attitude has the highest mean score [37.13 (4.18)]. Social Restrictiveness attitude which represent the negative attitude has the lowest mean score [25.42 (4.82)]. Results indicated that race, educational level and previous experience with the mentally ill patients had a significant association with community attitudes towards the mentally ill patients. Meanwhile, age, gender, religion, occupation, income and media have no association with community attitudes towards the mentally ill patients. These results are expected to help the related parties in conducting various comprehensive and holistic programs or campaign. Specifically, medical social worker should be more sensitive to the public attitude toward the mentally ill patients so that they could recognize the contributing factors on negative attitudes and prevent them.
Keywords: attitudes, community, mentally ill

The Delphi method has been widely applied in many study areas to systematically gather experts' input on particular topic. Recently, it has become increasingly well known in health related research. This paper applied the Fuzzy Delphi method to enhance the validation of a questionnaire pertaining chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) risk factors among metal industry workers. A detailed, predefined list of possible risk factors for COPD among metal industry workers was created through a comprehensive and exhaustive review of literature from 1995 to 2015. The COPD questionnaire were distributed among people identified as occupational, environmental, and hygiene experts. Linguistic variable using Likert scale was used by the expert to indicate their expert judgment of each item. Subsequently, the linguistic variable was converted into a triangular fuzzy number. The average score of the fuzzy number will be used to determine whether the item will be removed or retained. Ten ...

Purpose University academicians are struggling to engage in teaching, supervision, research and publication. The purpose of this paper is to determine how academicians cope with the various burdens of academia work stressors to overcome burnout. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional study was conducted from January to July 2017. In total, 327 research university academicians were selected using a proportional stratified randomized sampling. Validated measures were used to collect data on perceived work stressors (teaching, research, interpersonal conflicts and career development), coping strategies (adaptive and maladaptive coping) and perceived burnout (emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalization and personal accomplishment (PA)). The data were gathered via computer assisted self-interviewing (CASI). The research statistical model was tested by two-steps of assessment replicating covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) with bootstrapping procedure to general...

This study determined the potential risk factors that may contribute to seropositivity among dogs and dog handlers from working dog and dog shelter institutions. Data was collected from dogs (n = 266) and dog handlers (n = 161) using a standardised guided questionnaire. Serum obtained from the dogs and dog handlers was tested using the microscopic agglutination test (MAT). A logistic regression analysis was used to predict leptospiral seropositivity of dogs and dog handlers based on potential risk factors. A total of 22.2% of dogs and 21.7% of dog handlers were seropositive. The significant predictors for the dogs’ seropositivity were presence of rats (OR = 4.61 (95% CI: 1.05, 20.33), p = 0.043) and shared common area (OR = 5.12 (95% CI: 1.94, 13.46), p = 0.001) within the organisation. Significant predictor for dog handler seropositivity was contact time with the dogs of more than six hours/day (OR = 3.28 (95% CI: 1.28, 8.40), p = 0.013) after controlling for the effect of other ri...

Background The association of nuts with cardiovascular disease and deaths has been investigated mostly in Europe, the USA, and East Asia, with few data available from other regions of the world or from low- and middle-income countries. Objective To assess the association of nuts with mortality and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Methods The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology study is a large multinational prospective cohort study of adults aged 35–70 y from 16 low-, middle-, and high-income countries on 5 continents. Nut intake (tree nuts and ground nuts) was measured at the baseline visit, using country-specific validated FFQs. The primary outcome was a composite of mortality or major cardiovascular event [nonfatal myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, or heart failure]. Results We followed 124,329 participants (age = 50.7 y, SD = 10.2; 41.5% male) for a median of 9.5 y. We recorded 10,928 composite events [deaths (n = 8,662) or major cardiovascular events (n = 5,979)]. Higher nut in...

&NA; Leptospirosis is one of the most widespread zoonotic diseases and despite extensive research, there is still a paucity of information regarding this disease in cats. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of leptospirosis among the shelter cat population in Malaysia and to determine the most common infective Leptospira serogroups among them. Blood samples were collected from a total of 110 cats from 4 different shelters. The sampled cats appeared healthy, with minimal evidence of feline upper respiratory disease. The Microscopic Agglutination Test was used to detect anti‐Leptospira antibodies against 20 pathogenic serovars. Based on a cut‐off antibody titer of ≥1:100, 20 of 110 sheltered cats, showed presence of anti‐Leptospira antibodies against at least 1 serovar. The serodetection of leptospirosis was 18.18% (95% confidence interval 12.09‐26.42). The most commonly detected serogroups were Bataviae, Javanica, and Ballum, with antibody titers ranging from 1:100 to 1:1600. Knowledge of the predominant infective serovars in hosts worldwide and regionally is imperative for understanding the epidemiology of this zoonotic disease. Serosurveillance is the first step in this process. Further studies are warranted for investigation of urinary shedding in naturally infected cats with leptospirosis, using Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and organism isolation followed by serovars identification.