NSTexclusive: In the wake of the Sabah incident, those from the medical fraternity have renewed calls to make vaccination compulsory for Malaysians.
Malaysia’s last polio case was reported in 1992, and in 2000, our country was declared free from the life-threatening and potentially crippling disease.
While the call to make the National Immunisation Programme mandatory is timely, it also highlights a series of cholera outbreaks in Alor Star during the early part of the 20th century that led to heightened health awareness in Malaya.George Maxwell arrived in Alor Star on July 15, 1909 to assume duties as the first British adviser to Kedah following the transfer of suzerainty of the four northern Malay states from Siam to Great Britain.
Unfortunately, his effort to obtain clean water from the ground had to be abandoned after the project was mired by delays. On Sept 8, 1911, the Straits Times reported that Penang Municipality engineer L.M. Bell had been commissioned to estimate the cost of supplying the state capital and a large part of the Kedah coastal region with drinking water brought in by pipes from Bukit Wang, a hilly region 33km north of the capital.
Tunku tried to elude the vaccination by escaping via the kitchen exit, but was caught by his mother’s servants and brought to his grandmother’s room where he joined his siblings in the inoculation process. Further gloom was cast over Kedah when news broke that the state surgeon and superintendent of prisons, Dr A.L. Hoops, and his wife had also been infected.
Health services in Malaya began to improve by leaps and bounds in 1920 when Maxwell became chief secretary of the Federated Malay States of Selangor, Negri Sembilan, Perak and Pahang. Due to gender imbalance among Chinese migrants, male members of this community suffered the most from the disease compared with their counterparts from other races.
At the same time, nurses regularly visited homes of newborns, and conducted health checks on infants and their mothers, as well as provided free supply of medicines. Milk and nutrient-rich food that they brought along were sponsored by private companies.
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