KOTA KINABALU: Sabah recorded the highest number of Thalassaemia patients in Malaysia with 1,533 currently undergoing treatment at hospitals.
Sabah Thalassaemia Society president Francis Mujim said 15,759 Thalassaemia carriers have been detected between 2008 and 2014, according to the statistics released by the Health Department.
“Last year, the Health Department carried out public screening on 93,044 individuals and 3,812 were confirmed to be Thalassaemia carriers,” he said at the press conference on the Sutera Harbour 7K Run here yesterday.
Sabah Thalassaemia Society and Special Olympics Sabah are the beneficiaries of the annual 7K run which will be held on August 29 at Sutera Harbour Resort.
Francis said some people have doubts about the society’s effort in controlling the number of Thalassaemia patients due to the large number of carriers.
“But our goal is to see Sabah having zero child born with Thalassaemia Major in 2030.”
To achieve the goal, Francis said the society was concentrating on educating patients and parents, motivating Thalassaemia children who were growing up and creating more public awareness to education the people on their families’ health history.
He said the oldest Thalassaemia patient in Sabah is 40 years old and still surviving while the oldest in the world is 79 years old.
With the public awareness campaign, the Sabah Thalassaemia Society encourages people to go for screening, especially children, in order to identify carriers of Thalassaemia.
Once the carriers have been identified, Francis said the society would motivate them and provide information on how they could prevent their children from getting Thalassaemia.
If both parents are carriers, their children would be born with Thalassaemia, he said.
As a non-governmental organization, Francis said the society did not have a source of income and depended on public donations to run its programmes.
He said the society received a large sum of money from its biggest donor, Sutera Harbour Resort, through the 7K Run last year.
He said the funds would be used to carry out the society’s programmes throughout the year.