Poverty hinders expansion of community service in Sabah
KOTA KINABALU: Community service in Sabah has not been able to expand at an encouraging rate due to poverty, despite awareness among the public.
Sabah has way to go to increase non-profit services, as approximately six to seven out of 10 people who work out of the city centre earn below RM3,000 a month.
People want to contribute but it is unrealistic for most, said Sabah Women and Children Hospital director Dr Tan Bee Hwai.
“It's unrealistic to expect them to take the money that they earn for their family and channel it towards voluntary efforts. Awareness is good, but the output of it is questionable due to various factors. They must be able to afford to contribute,” he said at the officiating of the National Cancer Council (Makna) halfway house at Taman Kingfisher.
As far as availability of nonprofit cancer services goes, such as the halfway house, Tan added that there ought to be more in Sabah and East Malaysia as a whole, although he acknowledged the challenges that came with setting up and sustaining such services.
“I don't know the numbers so I won't be able to tell how far behind Sabah is in terms of cancer services, but as you can see, West Malaysia is half the size of East Malaysia and yet they have three Makna halfway houses whereas we only have one. They should be six times better than us in that respect, but we must also understand that having a halfway house and sustaining it is very costly. They would probably need to spend between RM60,000 and RM70,000 annually for maintenance of the house,” he said.
On cancer prevalence in Sabah, Tan said 8,000 of 3.5 million Sabahans are receiving treatment at the hospital, with breast and cervical cancers most common among women and colon cancer among men.
However, overall prevalence had declined since the hospital cancer centre was open in 2014, said Tan, with the figures down to one in every 400 people contracting the illness, as opposed to the previous figure of one out of every 500.
“As a whole, breast cancer is still the most recorded form of cancer in Sabah due to access to mammograms, which makes it easier to detect. Cervical cancer has taken a good decrease because we now have vaccines for the human papilloma virus (HPV), available for all children nationwide at 13 and 18 years old, given by the government.
“Our centre treats people from all over Sabah, as well as northern Sarawak and Labuan. We opened our centre in 2014 and we actually have space to place good machines until 2024.
“I think the economy is recovering and our Minister of Health and People's Well-being is trying very hard to make sure our equipment is on par with other cancer centres in West Malaysia, as well as the world,” said Tan.
He added that of the RM168 million worth of equipment, approximately RM16 million worth needed to be replaced in stages.