Background: The Ministry of Health (MOH) under their sub-division, the Pharmacy Enforcement

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Background: Tongkat Ali (TA) or Eurycoma longifolia is a herbal medicine (HM) plant traditionally used to treat sexual dysfunction and enhance libido in men. Websites containing information about HM are abundant. However, studies have shown that in general the quality of websites containing information on HM is low. The present study aims to assess the quality and risks of websites containing information about TA supplements and to identify the health claims for TA. Methodology: A cross-sectional study to evaluate the quality and risks of websites discussing TA supplements was conducted. Online marketing websites, research articles, news articles, personal opinions, and those restricted by password were excluded. The quality and risks of websites were assessed using a modified DISCERN tool and a set of risk assessment criteria, respectively. The health claims for TA were identified and analyzed using content analysis. Results: Overall, 321 websites met the inclusion criteria and were further evaluated. The overall rating of the quality of the websites was low, with a mean score ± standard deviation of 1.07 ± 0.51. Most websites lacked information that there may be more than one possible treatment choice and did not discuss areas of uncertainty. However, 67.9% (218/321) of the websites received a risk score of zero. A minority of websites (5/321, 1.6%) discouraged the use of conventional medicines. The most common health claims for TA included in the websites related to the enhancement of testosterone level (121/321, 37.7%), treatment of malaria (112/321, 34.9%), and improvement in libido (108/321, 33.6%). Conclusions: Websites containing information about TA supplements generally have a low-quality rating based on a modified DISCERN tool despite having a low-risk score. Government agencies and healthcare professionals (HCPs) must be more proactive in the critique and dissemination of information relating to HM, and in ensuring the safe use of HM among the public and patients.

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Introduction: One of the solutions to reduce unregistered drugs usage is via awareness and educational programmes. The aim of this study is to determine the significance difference of patients' level of knowledge between control and intervention groups towards registered drugs. Method: The study used a pre-and post-test by answering the validated survey during October-November 2018 at a tertiary hospital in Malaysia. It has two groups as an intervention group (IG) receiving counseling and control group (CG) which did not receive any counseling. This study used systematic random sampling. The data analysis was performed using SPSS version 23. Descriptive data was reported, including the answers each question, score, level of knowledge based on the percentages and the socio-demographic data. The pre and post differences of the score between control and intervention groups were assessed using ANCOVA. Result: A total of 657 respondents were obtained which overall response rate of 93%). Majority of the participants are aged between 18-28 years old (47%), female (58.3), Malay (47.4%), Degree holder (69.1%) and in the government sector (38.3%). However, the majority of participants are in the category of the acceptable level of knowledge towards registered drugs (40.8%) and only 3.5% of the participants are in the category of excellent. However, about 66.1% of the participants have scored above 50%. It can be considered that the majority of the participants have knowledge about registered drugs. IG group displayed significantly higher post-test results compared with CG group (p<0.001). Conclusion: The used of the validated survey during the awareness programmes might give benefit to the public who attends the awareness and educational programmes and finally can improve the effectiveness of the programmes in the future. In the future, the improvement of the design of the campaign might include the use of a survey in order to give more understanding to the public towards registered drugs.