Objectives: Environmental risk factors contribute to 24% of the global burden of disease from all causes in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), and to 23% of all global deaths. Malaysia being an advanced developing country, there is a need to prioritise environmental health issues to enable environmental health practitioners to focus on the most significant and urgent environmental health concerns.
Content: This project was undertaken by a Thematic Working Group on Environmental Health Experts (TWG 10) under the Malaysian National Environmental Health Action Plan. Sixteen pre-selected environmental health issues were presented to a two focus group discussions among 20 environmental health and related professionals who then scored each issue on its magnitude and severity scale.
Summary: The total of these scores generated a list of priority environmental health issues for Malaysia. Children environmental health came out as the environmental health issue of the highest priority.
Outlook: We hope that this list of priority environmental health issues will be used for prioritising academic and professional manpower training, research funding allocation and planning for intervention programmes by various stakeholders.
Keywords: Malaysia; environmental health issues; focus group discussion; priority.
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