Do you know what is the Death Rate in Malaysia, 2022? 

According to Ministry Economy Department of Statistic Malaysia official portal, the number of deaths had increased into 34.5% from the year in 2021 to 2022. (Mohammad, B,2022). This is due to the pandemic that had happened which had taken an enormous of lives that been infected by the COVID-19. Some of the people that survived the disease been reported had side effects.In the year of 2021, the highest causes of death was the infection followed by the Ischaemic heart diseases, Pneumonia, Cerebrovascular diseases and many more. These diseases usually will attack patient who are aged more than 40. But now, patient who aged below 40 also had been reported to have one of theses diseases.

Figure 1.1  Picture shows the causes of death

Present Situation 

Nowadays, the cases due to the infection had been reported lesser compared to the year before which is in 2021. Although the COVID-19 infection cases decreases, heart diseases reached the top 1 leading causes of death in Malaysia followed by the Pneumonia disease. Heart diseases becoming the top for the causes of death due to its symptom hard to be detected in early stage. The early symptoms chest pain, body feels weak, shortness of breath and pain in the jaw, neck, or back. (Walensky, P,P, 2022)

Figure 1.2  Chest discomfort

Besides the heart diseases, cerebrovascular disease also becoming one of the top causes of death in Malaysia. This disease is due to the blood flow had been clot in the brain vessels.  The symptoms which include dizziness, headache, numbness in certain body parts and slurred speech. In order to detect Cerebrovascular disease at early stage, the patient need to do Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of the brain or Magnetic Resonance Angiogram (MRA). These diseases can be treatable at the early stage but these kind of diseases had many symptoms that are the same like the normal fever. For example dizziness, this issue many people thinks that this kind of pain can be treat without consulting a doctor.

Figure 1.3 Symptoms for Cerebrovascular disease

Future Vision

In my opinion, in the upcoming decades, death rate in Malaysia can be reduced if our hospital staff have many professional doctors in certain area of body parts such as the brains and many more. It is to ensure more patient can be treated and can be saved.

Next, university can encourage student who are taking medic courses to do more research to find a new type of medicine for certain diseases. This is to ensure in the future, we could find a new medicine so that we can safe more lives in the future.

Furthermore, tobacco intake are one of the key that leads to specific disease like cancer,  heart attack and many more. If the number of smokers continue to deplete, the death rate in Malaysia for upcoming years can be lessen.

Solutions

To achieve the vision that had been discussed earlier, the hospitals need to look for more professional doctors who are expertise in a particular body parts. For example, expertise in brain surgery, the more doctor who are expert in this field could help more patient with the same issue. By doing so, more patient could be safe and can be treated at once. Event though we already had many doctor who are expert these but still it is insufficient and few patient need to wait for few days or months waiting to get their surgery done. There are also limitations of doing so, such as in order to hire an experienced surgeon, the hospital needs to pay for 1 surgeon up to RM 700,000 per year. Therefore, some hospitals could not afford to hire some of the experienced doctors.

Not only that, ministry of education can encourage students who are in Bio stream students to do more hands on practice in the labs during high school. It can helps student to practice handling apparatus and the materials they used. Universities also need to give their students who are taking medic courses to do research about plants or herbs so that could help to create a new medicine for future uses. The challengers of doing this are, in high school nowadays they prefer to grade their students by their examination marks therefore students care less about the experiment they did in their school time.

Moreover, to reduce the intake of tobacco, government could increase the tobacco taxes yearly. Raising the taxes of the tobacco will increase the price of the products which in the end consumer will stop buying the products. (Raising taxes on tobacco, 2023). For the case for heavy smoker, they are hard to stop smoking since they are addicted to smoke due to the high amount of nicotine that are in the tobacco.

Reflection

When doing research about this issue, I can conclude that taking care of ourselves are also important to make sure we could live with loved ones as long as possible. Doing research about the herbs or any type plants that had not been discovered is a good ways to produce better quality of medicine in the future. Hence, with the aid of the medicine, we could reduce the suffering felt by the patient even though for a while. 

References

1.  Mohammad, B. (2022, October 27).  Causes of Death. 

                  Retrieved from https://www.dosm.gov.my/portal-main/release-content/statistics-on

2.  Walensky, P,P. (2022, August 31). Heart attack. Retrieved                                                                                      from https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/heart_attack.htm#:~:text=Heart%20attack%20signs                    %20and%20symptoms,%2Dheaded%2C%20or%20unusually%20tired.

3. (2023). Raising Taxes on Tobacco. 

  Retrieved from https://www.who.int/activities/raising-taxes-on-     tobacco#:~:text=Raising%20taxes%20on%20tobacco%20products,and%20youth%20initi  ation%20is%20prevented.