Page 3 - NIH Bulletin Vol. 16 December 2020
P. 3

SPECIAL EDITION: BATTLING COVID-19











          MESSAGE FROM

          Dr. Hishamshah Mohd Ibrahim
          Deputy Director-General of Health Malaysia
          Research & Technical Support


          Assalamualaikum & Selamat Sejahtera

          NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES……

          In the past few months, we witnessed how nations
          across the world were brought down to their knees by a
          single, common enemy, the SARS-CoV-2. Many countries,
          presumed to have state of the art medical facilities and
          services, were unable to cope with the catastrophe. The
          global death toll keeps rising daily. Humanity is at war with
          a virus.

          COVID-19 outbreak which started in the city of Wuhan,
          China in December 2019, reached the shores of Malaysia
          on 25 January 2020. On 11 Mac 2020, WHO declared the
          outbreak a pandemic and later designated the  ongoing
          pandemic a  Public Health Emergency of International
          Concern.

          The NIH team has been busy working behind the scenes,
          setting up COVID-19 Operations Room, running laboratory
          tests, successfully optimizing real time RT-PCR SARS-CoV-2,
          full genome sequencing and identifying of new mutations,
          conducting collaborative research, epidemic prediction
          using real time analysis to assist in public health policy
          decisions such as MCO implementation, publishing articles
          and organizing weekly live webinars on Clinical Updates
          in COVID-19. The health system responses taken by the
          Ministry of Health to contain the outbreak were captured
          through MAera (Malaysia Alliance for Embedding Rapid
          Reviews in Health Systems Decision Making) platform.  We
          succesfully published “The Covid-19 Chronicles of Malaysia
          (1st & 2nd Edition) and our own country ”Malaysia Health
          Sector Response to COVID-19 pandemic” report. Some
          officers  were deployed to  district  health  offices and the
          National Crisis Preparedness Response Centre (CPRC) for        Dr. Hishamshah Mohd Ibrahim
          disease surveillance.                                      Deputy Director-General of Health Malaysia
          The NIH Bulletin for 2020 is a special edition dedicated to
          highlight all the efforts by NIH during these challenging
          times. As the number of positive cases decline, I hope
          Malaysians continue to be vigilant and adapt to the new
          norm and our health system remains resilient.

          #StongerTogether
          #MalaysiaPrihatin
          #kitamestimenang
          #kitajagakita



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