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Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges to healthcare systems worldwide. Maintaining essential health services, including maternal and child health (MCH), while addressing the pandemic is an enormous task. This study aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the utilisation of MCH services in Malaysian public primary care.Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted using national administrative data from 1124 public primary care clinics. Eight indicators were selected to measure service utilisation covering antenatal, postnatal, women’s health, child health, and immunisation services. Interrupted time-series analysis was used to evaluate changes in levels and trends of indicators during four different periods: pre-pandemic (January 2019–February 2020), during pandemic and first lockdown (March–May 2020), after the first lockdown was lifted (June–December 2020) and after the second lockdown was implemented (January–June 2021).Results Most indicators showed no significant trend in monthly utilisation prior to the pandemic. The onset of the pandemic and first lockdown implementation were associated with significant decreasing trends in child health (−19.23%), women’s health (−10.12%), antenatal care (−8.10%), contraception (−6.50%), postnatal care (−4.85%) and postnatal care 1-week (−3.52%) indicators. These indicators showed varying degrees of recovery after the first lockdown was lifted. The implementation of the second lockdown caused transient reduction ranging from −11.29% to −25.92% in women’s health, contraception, child and two postnatal indicators, but no sustained reducing trend was seen afterwards. Two immunisation indicators appeared unaffected throughout the study period.Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted MCH services utilisation in Malaysia. While most MCH services were negatively affected by the lockdown implementation with varying degrees of recovery, infant immunisation showed resilience throughout. This highlights the need for a targeted preparedness plan to ensure the resilience of MCH services in future crises.

Objectives To determine the longitudinal impact of elder financial and psychological abuse on risk of death among older Malaysians.Design 7-year prospective cohort study. Baseline data were collected in late 2013 and respondents were followed up in June 2020.Setting Kuala Pilah, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia.Participants 1927 community-dwelling older adults aged 60 or older randomly sampled from the national census. Individuals with severe cognitive impairment were excluded.Outcome measure Mortality data were provided by the Malaysian National Registration Department and linked to respondents’ national identification numbers. Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression were used to examine victims’ survival periods and the impact of abuse on risk of death.Results Overall, 450 respondents (23.4%) died after 7 years. Among financial and psychological abuse victims, death percentage was 25.8% compared with 23.3% among those who did not experience these types of abuse. Kaplan-Meier curves showed shorter survival among abuse victims, but Cox regression found no significant impact of financial and psychological abuse on mortality risk (HR 1.05, 95% CI 0.78 to 1.41). Among all the variables studied, only cognitive impairment led to higher mortality risk (HR 1.32, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.69).Conclusion Our findings contradict prior empirical studies that supported the link between elder abuse and neglect (EAN) and mortality, even though we focused on two abuse subtypes. Results in this study are more in line with the recently emerging evidence that showed no association between EAN and mortality.

Objectives To determine the prevalence and factors associated with multimorbidity among community-dwelling older adults in Malaysia.Design A population-based cross-sectional study.Setting 13 states and 3 Federal Territories in Malaysia.Participants A total of 3966 adults aged 60 years and above were extracted from the nationwide National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2018 data set.Primary outcome measures Multimorbidity was defined as co-occurrence of at least two known chronic non-communicable diseases in the same individual. The chronic diseases included hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidaemia and cancer.Results The prevalence of multimorbidity among Malaysian older adults was 40.6% (95% CI: 37.9 to 43.3). The factors associated with multimorbidity were those aged 70–79 years (adjusted OR (AOR)=1.30; 95% CI=1.04 to 1.63; p=0.019), of Indian (AOR=1.69; 95% CI=1.14 to 2.52; p=0.010) and Bumiputera Sarawak ethnicities (AOR=1.81; 95% CI=1.14 to 2.89; p=0.013), unemployed (AOR=1.53; 95% CI=1.20 to 1.95; p=0.001), with functional limitation from activities of daily livings (AOR=1.66; 95% CI=1.17 to 2.37; p=0.005), physically inactive (AOR=1.28; 95% CI=1.03 to 1.60; p=0.026), being overweight (AOR=1.62; 95% CI=1.11 to 2.36; p=0.014), obese (AOR=1.88; 95% CI=1.27 to 2.77; p=0.002) and with abdominal obesity (AOR=1.52; 95% CI=1.11 to 2.07; p=0.009).Conclusion This study highlighted that multimorbidity was prevalent among older adults in the community. Thus, there is a need for future studies to evaluate preventive strategies to prevent or delay multimorbidity among older adults in order to promote healthy and productive ageing.