SIBU: A health screening programme is an effective way to detect health problems at an early stage.
Minister of Women, Early Childhood and Community Wellbeing Development, Datuk Seri Fatimah Abdullah, pointed out that normally people would only seek medical treatment if they were sick.
Taking Healthy Athlete Programme (HAP) as an example, she pointed out that 20 per cent of the athletes who came for the health screening showed pre-hypertension symptoms.
“I was informed that this morning about 20 per cent of those who underwent health screening so far were detected with pre hypertension symptoms.
“They were young people unlike me ironically they had already shown such symptoms.
“One of them just now showed 160 (blood pressure reading) which is very high. So, thing like this (health screening programme) helps to alert parents to take their kids for follow-up,” she said when met by reporters during the HAP programme at SJK Thien Hua today.
Fatimah also shared that during the programme people who undergo the health screening and are detected with any health problem will be referred to the public hospital for further medical treatment.
“When we discover there is a problem that has been detected here during our programme, doctors will recommend them to do a follow-up.
“Parents will do the follow-up (to clinic or hospital). Hence, with such programme we will be able to send out athletes to get their medical treatment early so that they can get treated and be healthy,” she said.
Also present were Sibu Division Health Officer, Dr Teh Ho Jun and others.
