Daily Review - 02 Dec 2008

2nd December 2008 (Tuesday)

This is the second day of our Community Medicine posting. Our main activity for the day was seminar presentation. There are 5 seminars conducted by our colleagues from different groups. There was a slight change in the schedule due to some unavoidable circumstances.
Our first seminar was on Health Infrastructure, presented by Group B. Dr Sawri was the lecturer designated for this topic. The seminar was well presented. This seminar gives us information on the health infrastructure in our country, Malaysia. There are four speakers presenting on the introduction and the organization chart of Ministry of Health, health infrastructure in the state, brief explanation of the departments under the State Health Department of Kedah, a detailed explanation of Public Health Department and its components, and lastly, district health. Dr Sawri mentioned that Public Health Department and its components are very important, especially for when we start working in the hospital. He also adds on to the explanation given by the speakers after the presentation ends. Later in the seminar session, Prof Narayan joined us and requested us to prepare a list of objectives that are lacking from the presentation. This list will ensure that more focus will be given to the gaps of information that we have obtained from the seminar.
Epidemiology of Non Communicable Diseases was our second seminar of the day. This topic was presented by three speakers from Group D. Prof. Rashid was the lecturer in charged of this topic. This seminar started off with a general presentation which encompassed the definition of communicable and non communicable disease. There are five non communicable diseases that were discussed, of which; each disease was explained by the headings of introduction of the disease, the magnitude of the disease, the pre-pathogenesis and lastly the prevention of these non communicable diseases. The five non communicable diseases were Breast Cancer, Cervical Cancer, Ischemic Heart Disease, Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus. The presentation was good overall. However, there are several comments passed by Prof Rashid. Epidemiology of non communicable disease in Malaysia was not given. Besides that, the data given in the presentation was not the latest. Prof Rashid adds on to some of the informations that were not included in the seminar. He also raised a query in everyone, as why hypertensive patients could not be controlled despite treatment. He suggested to us that this will be a good survey to be conducted in our village posting. Prevention measures given by the speakers were not according to the five diseases mentioned in the seminar. Therefore, Prof Rashid gave us a brief idea what are the measures taken in our country in preventing the five mentioned non communicable diseases.
Third seminar was presented by three speakers from Group A. Their seminar topic is on health promotion. Dato’ Dr Zahari was with the class throughout this session. Informations conveyed from this presentation were adequate. One of the speakers shown us some of the materials used in the campaign of health awareness in Malaysia. The presentation was conducive and most of the information was concise. However, there are some portions of the presentation where the delivery of the information is a bit complicated. Dato’ Dr Zahari did mention about this problem after the presentation. He also explained to us that health promotion to the community is not the same as the health promotion we learned or heard from the health professions. Layman terms should be used and the preventive measures should blends well into their daily life without causing much chaos to them. Therefore, we must understand their lifestyle before making the attempt of introducing preventive methods to the villagers.
After lunch break, we continued with the fourth seminar which was on disease surveillance. Dr Sawri was with the class during this session. Two speakers from Group C gave a very brief explanation to what disease surveillance was to the class. Several terminology used in the disease surveillance was introduced to us. Explanation regarding the process of disease surveillance was given. The list of notifiable diseases was given to the class as well. Dr Sawri told us get a look at the notification form during our DHO posting. There are several questions related to this seminar topic. The format used by our country in disease surveillance should be known to everybody. After the notification of disease, how did the district health officers send the information to the State Health Department and ultimately to the Ministry of Health. Syndromic notification was explained very brief, just before the session ends. Our colleague also attached a flow chart that can explain the process of disease surveillance in detail.
The last seminar for the day was on Epidemiology of Dengue. Two speakers from Group E conveyed numerous facts regarding dengue to the class. Epidemiology of dengue in the country and the world was well explained. Other than that, there are explanation given for the pathogenesis, clinical features and what was done after a patient was diagnosed with dengue fever. Prevention of dengue was well delivered to the class. After the presentation, Prof. Narayan, who was in charged of this topic, gave us a few trigger questions regarding dengue. These questions made us relate the knowledge that we had to the problem given. This is known as problem knowledge coupling. During the DHO posting, we should find out how the health officer implements the fine system in prevention of dengue, and how does the fogging area being decided.
Before the class ends, Prof. Narayan reminded the class again to make a list of objectives that we have to gather information from our DHO posting. Besides that, Dr Sapna had given us homework exercises on epiinfo. Every student is to draw graph and frequency table based on the Oswego data found in the epiinfo program.