KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 11 — The Health Ministry (MoH), together with the Ministry of Women, Family and Community Development (KPWKM), will set up a committee to study how allocations for social care can be boosted.
Its minister, Khairy Jamaluddin said this was to support families who could not afford domiciliary care services for family members stricken with dementia or related medical conditions.
“We need to invest, not only from the clinical aspects such as roping in more specialists in that field but equally important, support services at the community level as well, especially for caregivers who are too burdened to provide the best care and support for their family members.
“We can learn from other nations such as the United Kingdom, Australia and so on where they are able to provide social care workers for family members who suffer from dementia and those with health conditions and cannot function as normal any longer,” he told reporters here today.
He said this at the launch of the 2022 Malaysian Conference of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Practice Guidelines on Management of Dementia (Third Edition) and Management of Schizophrenia (Second Edition) here today.
Khairy said more people are being diagnosed with mental health illnesses, dementia in particular.
He predicts that this problem will see an increase due to the fact that Malaysia is showing trends of being an ageing society, adding that such patients would require constant care. — Bernama
