Page 198 - COVID-19 COUNTRY REPORT: Moving Beyond Pandemic EDITION 2022

Moving Beyond Pandemic (Edition 2022) National Institutes of Health

CHAPTER 10:

A WHOLE OF SOCIETY APPROACH TO
PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT IN MALAYSIA

Muhd Zulfadli Hafiz Bin Ismail, Vivek Jason A/L Jayaraj, Nabilah Hanis Binti Zainuddin,
Hasnah Binti Mat, Najjah Binti Tohar, Yusrina Binti Mohd Yusoff, Evi Diana Binti Omar, Nor
Anita Binti Affandi, Ainil Zafirah Binti Abd Karim, Zuraida Binti Che Hassan

10.1 Introduction
The Coronavirus Disease-19 pandemic has led to disruptions at every level of society and
the economy. Three years of active transmission has led to more than 750 million reported
infections and 6.8 million reported mortalities globally (1). The complexities of agents, their
interactions with other agents, and the environment have meant that rigid traditional
public health responses cannot sufficiently control disease. A whole-of-society approach
aims to reduce these complexities via collaboration at every level of society- Government,
local Government, private sector, and community. Response in the long term cannot afford
the costly suppressive measures of the early days but instead must assume synergism
across all levels of society can manage an increasingly complex and dynamic pandemic
(2).
The COVID-19 pandemic response in Malaysia has been characterised by such adaptations
and evolution in disease control. In early 2020, the Ministry of Health (MOH) leveraged its
response on a variety of guidelines, legislations and policies, such as the Malaysia Strategy
for Emerging Diseases and Public Health Emergencies (MySED) II Workplan, National
Security Council Act 2016 (Act 776), the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases
Act (Act 342), the International Health Regulations 2005, and several others. Across time,
Malaysia has grown in resilience and achieved a well-orchestrated multisectoral effort in
disease control and prevention. This multisectoral effort has actively sought synergisms
both vertically into all government agencies and also horizontally into the private sector,
non-governmental sector and the community.
We aim to describe the development of this whole-of-society approach in Malaysia within
the chapter. A framework was developed to capture the different levels of this approach.
We describe these developments across the lateral whole-of-government approach, the
vertical collaborative governance and the whole-of-society approach using both these
arms. These are defined as:
• Whole of Government- public service agencies work across portfolio boundaries to
develop integrated policies and programmes towards the achievement of shared or Chapter 10
complementary, interdependent goals (3).
• Collaborative governance- A governing arrangement where one or more public
agencies directly engage stakeholders beyond public agencies in a collective decision-
making process that is formal, consensus-oriented, and deliberative and that aims to
make or implement public policy or manage public programs or assets (4).
• Whole of Society- collaborative approach incorporates public agencies, including but
not limited to businesses, philanthropic organisations, communities, and the entire
public as a whole (3).
The extraction of data on policies and initiatives was from previous country reports,
research articles and media pieces and was based on the framework. Content analysis
was performed on extracted data to distill the overall approach in Malaysia.

184 Chapter 10 -A Whole of Society Approach to Pandemic Management in Malaysia Chapter 10 -A Whole of Society Approach to Pandemic Management in Malaysia 185