Beware the soft signs!

Credit: Pinterest
Sarawak, 1950.
A tattooed Orang Ulu nurse and patient.

Have you noticed how so often we are made to realise of our shortcomings? We thought the house was spick and span only to receive a metaphorical smack on the head when it is discovered that the stench was actually culminating the years sweeping the dirt under the carpet and the moisture it accumulated year in year out.

Our colonial masters left us with a community level medical services network that we could be proud of. In the late 50s and all through the 70s, every gravid mother, parturient and neonate in a village was given personalised attention by the members of the medical team. They took great pleasure in caring for them from the cradle to the grave (when the time is ripe, of course).

One of their greatest success stories is the immunisation programme that drastically brought down the incidence of common communicable diseases.

Over time, we have become complacent. Lurking beneath the surface society, amongst the subaltern community, the immigrant population, the unwelcomed sojourners, undocumented unskilled workers and overstayed students who became pregnant by choice or otherwise, are individuals who are not protected against many diseases that the adult Malaysian populations are. Since daily survival is a struggle, ensuring that their newborns are immunised is the least of their priorities. This would dilute the herd immunity and hence put the rest of the citizens at risk of various diseases that we thought we had eradicated in the country. Something to look into!

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