Live Blogging of NMF - Prof. Dr. Fatimah Harun

Next speaker - Prof. Dr. Fatimah Harun, paediatric endocrinologist at UM Medical Centre

- A student was doing elective asked to do this
- Little did Dr. Fatimah know that she would be speaking to a big group and in front of 2 MPs.
- Can't do much at small clinic
- Came back to alma mater for training and serve
- Happy at UMMC

- Treat children and teach young students to be good doctors.
- What do you think of prosporous community?
- A prosporous community lives in a state of well being.
- Not totally in economic sense
- Community have people in good health, good decent home, strong family ties, high moral value
- Level of maturity
- Self discipline
- Tolerance
- Care
- Live peacefully as one nation.
- A community that is clean
- Community for recreation
- Personal sense of security and social justice
- Equal opportunity to achieve one's success
- Prosperous community
- If can achieve that, it would be superb

- What would health care to achieve this
- Healthy individual is stronger and more creative
- Healthy people are asset to our nation
- Has a role to play in preventive aspect of health
- Doctors must have the skills to diagnose and treat in the state of the art
- Whether our government has placed enough priority?
- 4.9% of budget in late 1990s in healthcare
- Nowadays about 6.9%
- Developed countries are at about 10-12%

- Healthcare system
- health indexes for Malaysia is good.
- Lifespan for Males are 71 and Females are 76
- Services for the children
- Infant mortality of 6
- Total mortality of 0.5
- On health, we are on the right track.

Rina - What about healthcare in rural areas? Do these people have access to quality healthcare?
by Fardina Fuad
- Healthcare is cheap
- Distribution is not at all level
- In a way, the rural folks do not enjoy specialized care
- They have to transfer to centers of these services.

- Better to invest on preventive health than to promote health.

Emily in Yale: What do you think of the lack of community space (i.e., free space like recreation parks etc.) in Malaysia especially at low and middle-class areas? Does it have an impact on mental health and have you seen any trends with regards to this?

- Housing not that condusive
- TV viewing etc is not healthy
- Average time people on TV is a lot
- People hardly walk less than 1,000 steps a day.
- Restructuring of society needs to do a role
- Public library for people to read - Instill reading habit

Q: Jab & Nikesh @ Yale: What have you done before, or, what would you do in order to develop a first class mentality of a child (Malaysian) at a young age if Wawasan 2020 is to be achieved?

-Every child should be a wanted child
- Should be a planned pregnancy
- Now we have teenage pregnancy
- Every child should be planned, not by accident
- Borned to a home where 2 people are taking care
- Dr. Fatimah tells mother of 1st born child
- It is easy to take care, if know how to
- Child needs warmth and security, not just physical care
- If a child cries, the mother needs to be there.
- No harmony at home


Ronny Leong@Yale: Why are the best practitioners in the private sector? What have we done to attract them to public service, and is it enough?

- Priority for private sector is self
- different priority
- private health practitioners also care in the health of patients
- It lifts off the burden of the doctors in the public sector

From Yale: I am pleased to hear that our healthcare system has achieved such success. However, could you elaborate on how exactly this contributes to the goals (2020) referred to earlier? Could a little of that 6% of the budget be used elsewhere, or perhaps allocated differently within the healthcare system?

- Focus on prevention of diseases and health awareness, rather than treatment.

---> Note that this is a live blogging and I might misinterpret what the speaker says.

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