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.

Purpose: To investigate the incidence, characteristics and risk factors of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in hospitalized children in a Malaysian hospital. Methods: Patients admitted to the Paediatric Department of Hospital Ampang in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia were monitored for occurrence of ADRs by spontaneous reporting or daily review of their case notes. Characteristics of ADRs were categorised and ADRs were analysed for causality, severity and preventability. Multivariate analyses were performed to determine associations between certain selected risk factors and ADR occurrence. Results: In 423 paediatric patients admitted in Hospital Ampang (436 admissions), the ADR incidence rate was 80 % (95 % CI, 5 - 11 %). The most commonly involved medications were systemic antibacterial drugs (77.4 %). About 61.3 % of the ADRs were of probable causality and 12.9 % were definitely preventable No severe ADRs were detected, with 41.9 % being moderate and 58.1 % being mild, based on a severity scale Younger children (OR = 3.387, 95 % CI, 1.377, 8.334) and the number of systemic antibacterial drugs given (OR = 1.469, 95 % CI 1.201, 1.798) were potential risk factors associated with ADRs. Conclusion: ADRs occur at a significant rate in the Malaysian children admitted to the hospital studied. Further studies are needed to provide drug safety data for the paediatric population in Malaysia.

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.

Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) cause significant morbidity and mortality. Improved assessment of ADRs to identify the causal relationship, the severity, and the preventability will aid ADRs prevention or reduce patient burden. Objective: The aim of this study was to develop mobile apps in assisting clinical decision in ADR assessments of causality, severity, and preventability using validated tools. The usability of the apps was assessed. Methods: We designed mobile apps using validated assessment tools for ADRs. They are the Liverpool ADRs Causality Assessment Tool, Hartwig's Severity Assessment Scale, and the Modified Schumock and Thronton Preventability Scale. The apps were named Adverse Drug ReactionCausality, Adverse Drug ReactionSeverity, and Adverse Drug RxnPreventability. A survey was conducted using the System Usability Scale (SUS) to assess the usability of the developed apps among health care professionals. Results: These apps are available for download through Google Play Store for free since January 2015. From the survey, the mean SUS score was 70.9 based on 26 responses from the pediatric ward of Hospital Ampang, Malaysia. Conclusions: The developed apps received an overall acceptable usability among health care professionals. The usage of these apps will improve detection, assessment, and avoidance of future ADRs. They will also contribute to future research on ADRs, thus increasing drug safety.

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.