PUTRAJAYA, Jan 6 ― The Health Ministry (MoH) today announced that it is concerned about the vaccination rates of babies and children under the age of one, and will be launching a Baby and Children Immunisation Programme.

Its minister, Dr Zaliha Mustafa said that the Covid-19 pandemic had an adverse effect on the rates, as only 30,000 of these babies and children came for their vaccinations in 2021, compared to 43,519 in 2020.

"Its impact is that the immunisation coverage for the Polio vaccine's third dose did not achieve the 2021 goal of being above 95 per cent,” she said during her New Year's address to the ministry here.

On a separate matter, Zaliha today launched an initiative for MoH to start using labels that are friendly to the vision-impaired that will be printed in Braille.

"These labels are created to make it easier for the vision-impaired to get information quickly and accurately about medicine and prescriptions.

"Malaysia is one of the first countries in Asia to introduce medicine labels that are friendly to the vision-impaired," she said.

The initiative, which had been worked on by MoH's pharmaceutical services department, will start by being implemented at 250 clinics nationwide and is expected to benefit 55,000 people who are vision-impaired.