Purpose: To compare access to medicines in children living in poor households (income of USD1/person/day) between urbanised Klang Valley and rural East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Methods: A semi-structured interview was conducted with caregivers to determine demographics, access to medicines, knowledge, attitude and practice of parents in obtaining medicines for children. Results: There was no significant difference socio-demographically between poor households in Klang Valley (N = 58) and East Coast (N = 40). The study found that access to medicine for children (N = 325) in the households was adequate, where all households that reported illness in the children over the last 1 month and the last 6 month periods, obtained medicines and 99 % of the children were fully immunized. Qualitative analysis showed that poor households face several barriers in accessing medicines for their children such as financial, transportation, physical and attitudinal. Conclusion: Access to medicines for children living in poor households in both areas were similar and adequate. However, barriers to access remain and further studies are required.

Introduction: Malay traditional medicine has been said to be cross-pollinated with Islamic traditional wisdom originating from the Middle East, including using ingredients mentioned by the Prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h) referred to as prophetic foods. A systematic review of Malay manuscripts was conducted to delineate traditional medicinal practices for four common illnesses found in the 'bottom billion' of the world's population namely worm infestation, gastroenteritis, fatigue and anaemia. Methods: A search strategy was developed to scan established catalogues of Malay manuscripts. The physical manuscripts were then systematically handsearched for relevant treatments for the above illnesses. The relevant prescriptions were captured, transliterated and translated for analysis. Results: Traditional medicinal prescriptions were obtained from 80 Malay manuscripts and commonly used ingredients were nutmeg, black seed, garlic and others. Few treatments used prophetic food ingredients such as date palm and goat's milk. Conclusion: Malay traditional medicines draw mainly on local wisdom and ingredients, with enrichment from Islamic medicinal practices.

Dyslexia affects up to 15% ofchildren and is the most prevalent learning disability. Withinformation technology devices being common in theprimary school classroom, advances in computer-basedremedial programs offer potential benefits in helping dys-lexic children improve their reading skills. However, aprevious systematic review (Strong et al 2010) found thatFast ForWord, a commonly used computer-based pro-gram, gave no extra benefit. The objective was to determinewhether computer-based programs provide significant ben-efits beyond traditional remedial programs in dyslexic pri-mary schoolchildren.