Attending appointments is vital for children with special needs, as such appointments involve long-term interdisciplinary care to ensure continuity of care and improve health and well-being. This study was performed to determine the prevalence of missed clinic appointments and identify the factors among those who have ever missed appointments and barriers of access to children’s special needs services at the Child Development Centre (CDC) at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre (UKMMC). Moreover, suggestions for improvement from the caregivers’ perspectives were explored. This is an explanatory sequential mixed methods study among caregivers of children with developmental disabilities aged up to 17 years old. Of 197 caregivers, 62 (31.5%) had missed clinic appointments. Forgetfulness was the most frequently cited reason. The bi-variable analysis showed significant differences in missed appointment rates by gender of caregivers and duration of follow-up. The final logistic regression model demonstrated that, when combined with the effect of being a male caregiver as an independent variable, follow-up duration of more than 6 years increased 2.67 times the risk of missing an appointment. Caregivers’ perceived barriers were transportation, caregiver, child and healthcare services factors. Policies and strategic plans should be focused on key findings from these factors to improve appointment adherence and accessibility to services for children with special needs.

Objectives: Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang, MAEPS was established as a COVID-19 Quarantine and Low-Risk Treatment Centre that was aimed to reduce the burden of hospitals. Various categories of healthcare workers (HCWs) were deployed nationwide. Being far from home and friends, working in an unfamiliar environment, and being concerned about one's own risk of COVID-19 exposure may exacerbate burnout in HCWs or affect their quality of life. Assessment on burnout and quality of life among MOH HCWs stationed at MAEPS 2.0 and the management of the healthcare workforce during the pandemic are shared. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted between September 2021 to May 2022. The Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire were used to assess burnout and quality of life of MOH HCWs respectively. The Checklist for the Management of Health Workers in Response to COVID-19 consisting of 8 Essential Actions was given to heads of divisions in charge to obtain their perspective. One point assigned to the intervention answered “Yes” by the majority of respondents. Cumulative marks were then converted to percentages according to each Essential Action. Results: The rate of burnout ranged between 18% to 32% among the 377 respondents. Majority of HCWs had a good and very good perception of their quality of life and were satisfied with their overall health. There were moderate to strong correlations (r = - 0.44 - 0.67) between burnout and quality of life (p<0.001). More than half of the eight Essential Actions in the checklist scored 100%. Conclusion: Management of workers is important to ensure preparedness for response, enhance surge capacity and maintain crucial health services during the pandemic. Some HCWs experienced burnout and it relates to their quality of life. Nonetheless, MOH HCWs management at MAEPS 2.0 was managed with minimum gaps against the checklist.International Journal of Human and Health Sciences Supplementary Issue: 2023 Page: S18

Khamis et al.: A comparative study of cost and quality of life among Skeletal Related Events (SRE) and non-SRE among breast and prostate cancer patients in Malaysia. BMC Health Services Research 2012 12(Suppl 1):P4.

Public health activities under district health offices (DHOs) play a major role in Malaysia’s fight against COVID-19. This article aims to describe and illustrate the public health activity pathway in combating the COVID-19 pandemic, and a team of public health workers who are familiar with DHO work settings was created in April 2020 for that purpose. Review of documents and the Ministry of Health’s updates was carried out, followed by a series of discussions with stakeholders. Based on the steps in the outbreak investigation tasks, the flow of activities from January to May 2020 was listed in line with the phases of the country’s National Movement Control Order 2020. Results show that the activities can be classified into three different sections—namely, the main action areas, category of cases, and level of care. The main process flow of activities comprised the case management and support activities. Case management flow was split into tasks for patients under investigation and persons under surveillance, while the support services existed throughout the phases. The pathways illustrate that the progression of the pandemic translated directly to changes in the pattern of activities, with additional subgroups of activities in accordance with all imposed guidelines.