Evidence-based data confirm the relationship between an increased availability of effective contraception and reduction in induced abortion rate. In Malaysia, the contraception prevalence rate in 1966 was 8.8 per cent to 52 per cent in 1984, but has levelled off since then. In recent years there has been increasing report of babies ‘abandonment’ in Malaysia. The aim of this study is to determine the knowledge, attitudes and practices related to contraception among women and doctors in Kota Kinabalu the capital of Sabah, Malaysia. Descriptive and analytical community-based cross-sectional study was used. A total of 240 women and 60 doctors were selected from either private or public clinics. The instrument used was face-to-face interview for the women and self-administered questionnaires for doctors. Analysis was done using SPSS version 21. The doctors (80%) felt that contraception is extremely important, and routinely discuss (63%) with their patients. Oral contraceptive pill (97%) is the most common type of contraceptive available in their clinics. About 68% of doctors surprisingly cited that abstinence plays a major part in their contraceptive advice. The average correct answer by doctors on knowledge is 62%. The women surveyed (98.8%) have heard of contraception. The main reason for using is for spacing of pregnancy and many stopped or did not use because of fear of side effects. Women attending the public clinic appear to know more about female and male sterilization and intrauterine contraceptive device compared to those attending private clinic. Further research is needed to reinforce this study.
Study site: Klinik Kesihatan (maternal and child health clinics), private general practitioner clinics. Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia
A Mycobacterium tuberculosis strain SBH162 was isolated from a 49-year-old male with pulmonary tuberculosis. GeneXpert MDR/RIF identified the strain as rifampicin-resistant M. tuberculosis. The whole genome sequencing was performed using Illumina HiSeq 4000 system to further investigate and verify the mutation sites of the strain through genetic analyses namely variant calling using bioinformatics tools. The de novo assembly of genome generated 100 contigs with N50 of 156,381bp. The whole genome size was 4,343,911 bp with G + C content of 65.58% and consisted of 4,306 predicted genes. The mutation site, S450L, for rifampicin resistance was detected in the rpoB gene. Based on the phylogenetic analysis using the Maximum Likelihood method, the strain was identified as belonging to the Europe America Africa lineage (Lineage 4). The genome dataset has been deposited at DDBJ/ENA/GenBank under the accession number SMOE00000000.