As there were more similarities than differences in health-care workers' attitudes toward suicide, recommendations on basic and continuous suicide prevention and management training among hospital workers were made. The interventions focused on improving knowledge, affective, and skill-based areas that were aimed to correct the wrongful understanding of and to minimize the negative attitudes toward suicidal individuals indicated by the study results.
INTRODUCTION
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are new smoking devices that have gained popularity recently. However, there is limited evidence on e-cigarette consumption in Malaysia. This study aims to determine the prevalence, risk factors and perception associated with e-cigarette use among those attending government hospitals and health clinics in Malaysia.
METHODS
A cross-sectional hospital-based study was conducted in seven public hospitals and health clinics in Malaysia, which were selected through a two-stage cluster sampling. A validated questionnaire was used to obtain data from the selected participants. Multivariable logistic regression was employed to determine the association between sociodemographics and perceptions of e-cigarette use.
RESULTS
Almost three-quarters (73.6%; n=923/1254) of participants were aware of e-cigarettes and 13.2% (n=122/923) reported having ever used e-cigarettes. The prevalence was significantly higher among males (18.1%), smokers (21.4%), and younger age group 18–34 years (30.2%). Ever users showed favourable perceptions towards e-cigarettes compared to non-users (23.3% vs 30.14%, p<0.001). Multivariable logistic regression revealed that current smokers, younger age group and those possessing a positive perception towards e-cigarettes were likely to be ever users of e-cigarettes.
CONCLUSIONS
The study showed that the awareness level of e-cigarettes was high amongst the population but the prevalence of ever e-cigarette user was moderate. Most of the ever e-cigarette users were male, current smokers, young adults and those with favourable perceptions towards e-cigarettes. Therefore, effective health educational activities regarding safe usage of e-cigarettes targeting those group identified in this study are warranted to reduce the negative outcomes from the use of this product.
Dengue fever is a vector-borne endemic disease that affects over 30 million Malaysians. Preventing the elimination of Aedes breeding sites is a necessary precautionary measure to strengthen the knowledge, attitudes and practices of the community. The aim of this study is to identify barriers to the knowledge, attitudes and practices of dengue prevention in the community through the study of selected articles published between 2010 and 2018. The present paper carried out a scoping review of available literature using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. The title and abstract of each study were screened and relevant studies were further assessed for eligibility. A total of 1352 related articles were selected for this scoping review. Of these, 349 articles were found to be in line with the study objectives and 25 articles related to dengue prevention knowledge, attitudes and practices were discussed in this study. Conclusions and Recommendations: This review suggests that factors interfering with dengue prevention behaviours are divided into two factors, namely, the internal factors that encompass attitudes and perceptions of dengue prevention behaviours, and the environmental factors such as weather, drainage systems, buildings designed with unreachable rain gutters and also poor drainage and piping system have found to be the Aedes habitats. Therefore, interventions are normally performed to prevent an incident to re-instil positive attitudes and perceptions among the community members should be strengthened through appropriate and ongoing community programs such as COMBI and Search & Destroy campaign organized by Ministry of Health Malaysia.
This paper presents physical and morphology properties of strontium stannate (SrSnO3) perovskite-type as a candidate of an n-type material thin film for organic-inorganic hybrid diode heterojunction for optoelectronics application. Typical wet-process of SrSnO3 deposition produce thick film and having 10 -8 S/cm order in conductivity. The SrSnO3 thin films were deposited on ITO glass substrates by RF magnetron sputtering using a purity 99.9% SrSnO3 target with 5.0 mTorr of gas pressure and 100 W of RF power at room temperature. The gas composition of pure argon (75%) and reactive oxygen gas (25%) was used for 60 min. XRD diffraction patterns revealed that the thin films are orthorhombic crystal structure with lattice parameter a=5.7040 Ǻ, b=8.06 Ǻ and c=5.7080 Ǻ with a strong orientation in the (002) direction. SEM images showed that films exhibited uniform surface morphology with a roughness average of Ra=2.258 nm and thickness of 311 nm. The EDX spectrum confirmed the presence of O, Sr, and Sn elements in the films with 75.22%, 8.29%, 16.49% in atomic number, respectively. The films were having a conductivity of 8.3310 2 S/cm with low resistivity of 12.410 -3 -cm.
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