A sample of Malaysians in the Klang Valley indicating their decision on becoming unrelated living kidney donors was surveyed regarding huge amounts of financial incentives to be rewarded to them. From the 1310 respondents, 72.1% said "no" on becoming a living donor. The reason "I don't think humans can live with only one kidney" scored the highest (35.6%), and from the 27.9% of the respondents who are willing to donate their organ with the right financial incentive, most of the respondents picked the reasons "I want to do something noble in life" (50%), and monetary reason scored the lowest (6.2%), indicating that financial incentive is not a major reason guiding individuals' decision on becoming living donors. We suggest that the government should put priority at targeting public education to raise the understanding on the risk, safety and the quality of life of donation and transplantation, and improving the public trust on the donation and the surgical methods to carry out transplantation.
This study was undertaken to explore the roles played by bidan kampungs and understand their contribution to rural Malay women during pregnancy and childbirth hundred sixteen pregnant women, 13 Western midwives, and 12 bidan kampungs were recruited using convenience and snowball sampling. Data were collected from focus groups, in-depth interviews, field notes, and observations. The findings indicated that although the women were happy to have Western maternity care, they valued the social and spiritual support received from bidan kampungs during pregnancy and postnatal care. Western care was considered useful for "modern" illnesses. The traditional maternity care that women received included pantang or ritual prohibitions that helped them through pregnancy and helped them achieve better postnatal recovery. The study indicates that there is a need to combine Western and traditional care for the benefit of the pregnant women and their infants' health.
Malaria remains a significant health problem in Yemen with Plasmodium falciparum being the predominant species which is responsible for 90% of the malaria cases. Despite serious concerns regarding increasing drug resistance, chloroquine is still used for the prevention and treatment of malaria in Yemen. This study was carried out to determine the prevalence of choloroquine resistance (CQR) of P. falciparum isolated from Yemen based on the pfcrt T76 mutation.