CARE FOR THE ELDERLY/
HIV INFECTED
By the year 2020, 2.59 million of the country's population will be above 65 years of age. This demographic shift from acute diseases to chronic diseases associated with age will in turn lead to the need for a shift in the type of care and the country's ability to meet this need."The Ministry of Health encourages the elderly population to be continuously active and useful to the community and family. This means changing people's concept of old age. Issues related to medical conditions must therefore be addressed earlier so that preventive efforts can start sooner. So there has to be a paradigm shift in healthcare efforts," commented Director General of Health Tan Sri Dato' Dr Abu Bakar Suleiman.
This fact is one of the reasons the country's Health Vision 2020 has shifted its emphasis from illness to wellness and shifted the responsibility for one's health maintenance from the state to the individual. The preventive measures adopted by the government has made Malaysians more aware about their health, says Dato' Dr Ridzwan Bakar, President of the Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia (APHM).
"Healthcare expenditure is bound to increase and question of funding is going to be an important issue. As such, the need for a comprehensive national healthcare financing scheme of some sort is imperative," he adds.
Dr Chan Chee Khoon, of the School of Social Sciences, USM and a member of Citizens Health Initiative, is also of the opinion that a publicly operated national health insurance fund should be initiated if a nationalized health system does not come into existence." Such a system should also support the care of HIV/AIDS patients if their treatments is not made affordable or if the government will not subsidies it."
Dr Molly Cheah President of the Malaysian Primary Care Doctor's Organization thinks there is a tendency for simple medical problems to be handled by specialists. Although a much smaller nation like Singapore has about 25 geriatricians while Malaysia has only six, most of the problems can be handled at primary care level. It has been documented that up to 90 - 95 percent of problems are solved at primary care level. "Therefore if care for the elderly is to be improved then we should improve the situation by providing training to GPs," she says, adding that Malaysia needs more geriatricians.
Dr P Krishnan, current president of the MMA in his speech at the MMA annual dinner in November reiterated the need to educate the population early both on the health problems of ageing and HIV infections. "Since the health status of older persons depends partly on the habits of a lifetime, the MMA would like to see our healthy lifestyle campaign targeted at all age groups, particularly the youths."
Dr Ridzwan is more optimistic about HIV infection and feels a cure will be soon available. "The WHO has ranked HIV infections as number 9 on their list of most common common causes of death in the year 2020, such is their confidence that a cure to mitigate the spread of HIV will be available by then."
According to WHO, besidesHIV infection, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease will be the chief causes of death by the year 2020 in most countries and Malaysia is no exception. In this context Dr Ridzwan feels that it is important to abolish smoking, control hypertension and normalise one's cholesterol levels.
"A dangerous trend is the more frequent occurrence of environment-related diseases, such as chronic lung disease and lung neoplasms. We should be paying more attention to what the environmentalists have to say," he adds.
Commenting on the issues Dr Cheah is of the opinion that Malaysia needs to pay more attention to matching training with the number and variety of diseases in the country. "At present there are contracts given out where preventive action is an exclusion. In this aspect the public too have a responsibility to educate themselves on the dangers of these diseases. Increased knowledge on this topic is an indirect promotion of good health, " she points out.
ATTENTION : Please also note that recently a Nigerian doctor, Dr. Jeremiah Abalaka, claimed that he had found a cure for HIV/Aids in the city of Abuja. He also claims that 24 HIV infected people were cured last January.
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