Day 4 - Vector Borne Diseases

Our day started off with a very warm welcome from Mr. Zahid, the backbone of the Vector Borne Disease Department of Sik District.

He started his briefing and enlightening us of his personal experience of 25years of working in health office. His briefing was more focused on dengue and malaria. According to him, the cases of Filariasis and Chikungunya was not registered in this district and praised him team's effort for maintaining this perfect record.

He said that the Informer at various Kelinik Kesihatan or Hospitals will update the e-notifikasi site of the web to inform the particular district of a Vector Borne case. Mr. Zahid's first duty every morning is to check this web and approve of the case and sent it to his superior for further evaluation.

Malaria was also discussed in detailed and control programs such as distribution of the "kelambu"(netting) to villages and obtaining blood films from suspected and affected individuals. every morning is to check this system and to accept or decline any cases which will be sent to the 2nd level of approval.ssion. He gave an overview of how the e-dengue website works and dengue control methods such as the fogging, ULP and the ABATE methods.ntinued, dengue became the hottest topic of discussion.

Not forgetting that he shared his personal experience of dealing with 3 Malaria patients found in the Sik district this year. The first patient involved a young female of 19 years old infected with Plasmodium Vivax and with no history of contact with immigrants. The second was an Indian gentleman which was also infected with Plasmodium Vivax and was kept at the depo pertahanan belantik until he was sent back to India. Lastly was a young man of the army force working at the Malaysia - Thailand border and was infected with mixed species which was the Plasmodium Vivax and Knowlesi. This patient was treated in Penang.

After finishing the talk, we headed to a Mosque at a place call Seniang about 20km away from the DHO in order to get the field experience of his personnel. Unfortunately upon arriving his team has already finished their routine checks.

However, we were briefed on the techniques of obtaining the larvae. He also added that any sample collection of larvae, mosquito or blood flims will be sent to Alor Star Hospital's lab for investigation.

Collection container with seal

Various Pipets used to collect the larvae

After finishing what we have came for, Mr. Zahid decided to bring us to a grape farm just further up from the mosque. The farm was one of a kind. The person in charge brought us around and explained how the grapes were planted.

The day came to an end as we thanked Mr. Zahid for his kindness. We drove back knowing that the knowledge gain felt like a wonderful dream.

ALEXANDER SAMUEL