Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Klang District Health Office received notification of a case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus (MERS-CoV) on 30th of December 2017. World Health Organization reported this as the second case of laboratory-confirmed MERS-CoV in Malaysia. The aim of is to highlight challenges that faced by district health office in controlling MERS-CoV outbreak. CASE REPORT: A 55-year-old Malay gentleman with history of performing umrah pilgrimage was tested positive for MERS-CoV on 31st December 2017. He was discharged after 11 days of admission. Active case detection was conducted. Of the 70 close contacts identified, 36 (51%) were from the same pilgrimage, 20 (29%) were healthcare professionals, 8 (11%) were other close airline contacts and 6 (9%) were household contacts. Throat swabs were taken on 58 contacts, and all were tested negative for MERS-CoV. All contacts were put on Home Surveillance for 14 days. DISCUSSION: Our main challenge is to confine the contacts at home. Some of the contacts still performed their daily activities because food ration was not provided. In addition, the home surveilance cards were not being accepted by some of the employers. We did face challenge in taking samples for throat swabs due to limited slots given by government hospital, lack of isolation rooms and trained staffs. Certain aspects of the MERS-CoV guideline are not well-defined, such as transporting close contacts for sample taking. The existing guideline needs to be revised and updated. Despite the challenges that we faced the outbreak was well-controlled.
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@proceedings{APCPH-2019-32,
title = {2nd Case of MERS-CoV in Malaysia: Challenges in Public Health Response},
author = {Lim Yin Cheng and Nirmalah Subramaniam and Masitah Mohamed},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-07-22},
urldate = {2019-07-22},
journal = {6th Asia-Pacific Conference on Public Health 2019 Proceedings},
issue = {6},
abstract = {INTRODUCTION: Klang District Health Office received notification of a case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus (MERS-CoV) on 30th of December 2017. World Health Organization reported this as the second case of laboratory-confirmed MERS-CoV in Malaysia. The aim of is to highlight challenges that faced by district health office in controlling MERS-CoV outbreak. CASE REPORT: A 55-year-old Malay gentleman with history of performing umrah pilgrimage was tested positive for MERS-CoV on 31st December 2017. He was discharged after 11 days of admission. Active case detection was conducted. Of the 70 close contacts identified, 36 (51%) were from the same pilgrimage, 20 (29%) were healthcare professionals, 8 (11%) were other close airline contacts and 6 (9%) were household contacts. Throat swabs were taken on 58 contacts, and all were tested negative for MERS-CoV. All contacts were put on Home Surveillance for 14 days. DISCUSSION: Our main challenge is to confine the contacts at home. Some of the contacts still performed their daily activities because food ration was not provided. In addition, the home surveilance cards were not being accepted by some of the employers. We did face challenge in taking samples for throat swabs due to limited slots given by government hospital, lack of isolation rooms and trained staffs. Certain aspects of the MERS-CoV guideline are not well-defined, such as transporting close contacts for sample taking. The existing guideline needs to be revised and updated. Despite the challenges that we faced the outbreak was well-controlled.},
note = {Type: ORAL PRESENTATION; Organisation: Klang District Health Office, Klang District Health Office, Klang District Health Office},
keywords = {apcph2019, Coronavirus, MERS-CoV, Middle east, outbreak, pilgrim},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {proceedings}
}