KOTA KINABALU: Queen Elizabeth Hospital 1 (QEH1) is conducting health screening on 137 Health Department staff from throughout the state as a random indicator to identify their health level.
Physician in sports medicine and rehabilitation of orthopedic department QEH1, Dr Mariam George Mathew, said it was important to have a healthy team in the state Health Department to ensure that they were fit enough to treat the patients.
“Now the age of retirement of civil servants is 60 years old, and it is important for our staff to be healthy. This conference is aimed to indicate the four main non-communicable diseases (NCDs), namely cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic lung diseases and diabetes that might be suffered by our staff.
“We will ask all participants to check their health level in this two-day event, and after that we will ask them to exercise according to their health level and we will see the result after a period of time,” said Mathew after the launching of QEH1 eighth state clinical conference on sports medicine at the hospital yesterday.
Apart from introducing 100,000 steps as an exercise, Mathew also said Health Department staff needed to eat balanced food because all four NCDs are also related to diet.
Six working papers will be covered during the two days.
The first presentation by Norsaadah Omar from QEH1 was on health promotion while Sin Nyen Yau from the occupational therapy unit of QEH II presented a briefing on “10,000 steps a day”. Second speaker Mathew presented a working paper entitled “Get Set and Go”.
The presentation yesterday ended with a presentation from Dr Mohd Nazar Azmi Mohamed who shared a working paper entitled “Exercise Is Medicine – The Melbourne experience”.
Today, three more working papers will be covered, namely “Forget Me Not” by orthopedic department head Nahulan A/L Thevarajah, followed by “How Old Are You” by QEH1 geriatrician Dr Richard Ng and “Preparing to Move Happily” by Dzulhairul Dzulkifli.
Sabah health director Dr Mohd Yusof Ibrahim who launched the event, said the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2011 showed diabetes cases in Malaysia had increased while hypertension among adults aged 30 years old had also increased from 32.2 per cent in 2006 to 32.7 per cent in 2011.
Also present at the launching yesterday was QEH1 director Dr Heric Corray.