Vaccine hesitancy has surfaced globally within the last few decades, and the fears and misconceptions of people about vaccine safety and effectiveness have been identified as key factors for their under-utilization. The familiarity, attitudes, and religious beliefs of the public and of future healthcare practitioners regarding vaccination are extensive areas needing exploration. The present exploratory cross-sectional study was designed, planned and carried out on students enrolled in health science and non-health science courses in one of the public universities of Malaysia. A research instrument that had been formulated, validated and subjected to reliability testing was used to collect the data, which were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. A response rate of 80.8% (n = 202) was obtained: the majority were female (n = 161, 79.7%), and had been vaccinated before (n = 190, 97.5%), while a mere 2% did not support vaccination for reasons pertaining to safety issues. The vaccine familiarity score was 10.79 ± 1.4, which significantly differed among the study disciplines (p < 0.001). The mean of the total attitude score was 14.95 ± 1.5, with no significant difference among demographics being noted. The mean of the total religious beliefs score was 24.29 ± 2.8 and significantly differed based on gender (p = 0.040) and study disciplines (p < 0.001). The current findings showed that the participants were familiar with vaccines and had generally positive attitudes and positive religious beliefs toward vaccination; thus, one can expect that their inclusion in immunization campaigns will generate positive outcomes of the immunization program. Although the current research reported few knowledge gaps, these may be handled with the introduction of a specialized immunization course at an undergraduate level.
Objective
The aim of this study was to identify factors that have a correlation with hypertensive patients’ knowledge in Malaysia.
Methods
A cross‐sectional survey and face‐to‐face interview methods were applied, and 1000 Malaysian adults were recruited to be involved in this study. The study was carried out in Hospital Kuala Lumpur, and self‐administered questionnaire was adopted from previous literature study.
Key findings
Most respondents were female, and the mean age was 48 years old. Analytical test showed that there is an association between gender, age, race, location, education level, and source of information and their knowledge about hypertension. The odds of knowledge were higher among female, urban, higher level of education, young (≤50 years old), and Chinese and Malay respondents and those who got their information from health professionals.
Conclusions
There are several factors have a great impact on hypertension knowledge in Malaysia; hence, understanding them makes it possible for the community to change public policies and educational programmes for the population that need it the most.
There are obstacles to high levels of hypertension awareness that are embedded in gender, income and lifestyle habits which need to be addressed leading to high levels of undiagnosed and uncontrolled hypertension. This study aimed to explore the various factors which affect hypertension awareness among a hypertensive population in a tertiary care hospital.
A quantitative study was conducted among hypertensive patients at a tertiary care hospital in Selangor, Malaysia. A validated and translated questionnaire was utilised as a data collection tool. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 25.
A thousand participants (female n=621, male n= 379) were recruited, and their mean age is 48± 11.09 years old. Approximately half of respondents were not informed by their doctor that they have hypertension. More than half of respondents were unaware about the normal range of systolic and diastolic. Female gender, Chinese race, urban resident, older adults, and tertiary education level are the most significant factors that have a great influence on the level of awareness among hypertensive population.
Hypertension awareness needs to be addressed from systemic point of view to solve the growing barriers to accessing correct information about the disease. Health care providers and authorities need to regulate the manner in which information on mortal diseases is presented to the public to reduce incidence of malpractice.
SARS-CoV-2 is the recent variation of the corona virus which is infecting people around the world and has affected more than 258 million people worldwide. Upon observation, the virus is similar to the coronavirus which spread from the horseshoe bat or wild animals to human beings. Up to date, there have been three major variants of the coronavirus which have been identified in UK, South Africa, and India which are spreading to other countries. Based on the current data, it is suggested that the incidents of repeated infection with SARS-CoV-2 is related to the level of neutralizing antibodies and the retained memory response which follows infection. Moreover, recently, a critical issue arises in relation to the association of black fungus and COVID-19, and urgent investigation is required. As a treatment method of COVID-19, FDA has recently approved the feasibility of Remdesivir to treat COVID-19 as emergency use authorization (EUA). There are also various possible antivirals which are still undergoing clinical trial. After widespread of the vaccine, the results showed that EUA vaccines have been effective in controlling COVID-19 in patients. However, these licensed vaccines ought to be reviewed to ensure they are also effective in combating the rising variants of SARS-CoV-2.
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