KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 29 ― The Health Ministry will trial the storage of children's immunisation history in their MyKid identification cards instead of in handbooks, its deputy minister said.
Deputy Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Hilmi Yahaya said the pilot project is set to start this year and would allow the ministry to determine the effectiveness of keeping the information electronically.
“We will conduct a pilot project at a Putrajaya clinic before extending it to other clinics nationwide, as well as to MyKad holders,” he was quoted saying by local daily New Straits Times (NST).
Dr Hilmi said the number of immunisation handbooks that went missing was growing annually, noting that it was costly to produce such handbooks and that the missing handbooks hamper healthcare providers' access to immunisation records.
“Parents usually forget to take the handbooks with them during medical check-ups, and some moved to a different location, such as from Penang to Kuala Lumpur.
“This causes difficulty for clinics to track down the immunisation records of their children,” he said, adding that the ministry does not have a second copy of the handbooks if parents lose them.
He also highlighted the example of cases involving diphtheria, a serious bacterial infection that affects the throat's and nose's mucous membranes, with 31 such cases reported last year.
“Out of the 31 cases, five deaths were recorded following the failure to get complete immunisation.
“When we checked, we found that the children's immunisation handbooks had been lost and as such, we could not track their immunisation history,” he said.
According to the NST, diphtheria immunisation is administered through five doses over a period of seven years, namely when a child is aged two months, three months, five months, 18 months and seven.
