The Institute of Public Health (IKU) released two National Health and Morbidity Surveys (NHMS) 2022. They are the Adolescent Health Survey (AHS) and the Maternal Health and Child Health (MCH) survey.
Director of the IKU from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr Noor Ani Ahmad, shared: “The AHS aimed to determine the prevalence of health risk behaviours and protective factors among adolescents in Malaysia.
“Meanwhile, the MCH aimed to asses health status among women and children in Malaysia.”

Adolescent Health Study
To improve adolescent health globally, the World Health Organisation (WHO) initiated the development of the health risk behaviours measurement tools known as the Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS).
Adolescents comprise approximately 15.6 per cent of the Malaysian population in Malaysia.
“The first GSHS was conducted in 2012 among adolescents to determine the prevalence of health risk behaviours and protective factors among adolescents in Malaysia,” Dr Noor Ani shared.
“In 2017, the second NHMS 2017: AHS using the GSHS methods and questionnaire was conducted in the country. In 2022, the Ministry of Health (MoH) conducted this third national survey on adolescents, NHMS 2022: AHS, with the cooperation from the Ministry of Education.”
She continued: “This NHMS 2022: AHS was a nationwide cross-sectional study involving 240 randomly selected secondary schools in Malaysia. This survey was conducted from June to July 2022 by 34 data collection teams, and 33,523 students studying in Form 1 until Form 5 participated in this survey.”
Topics covered:
- Alcohol use
- Dietary behaviours
- Drug use
- Hygiene (including oral health)
- Mental health problems
- Physical activity
- Protective factors
- Sexual behaviours
- Tobacco use
- Violence and unintentional injury
The factors that influence adolescent practices and behaviour are beyond the scope of the study. Thus, further study is warranted.
Maternal Health and Child Health
“The first NHMS MCH was conducted in 2016 and then repeated a second time in 2022, both of which concentrated on the health status of mothers with their most recent child under the age of two , children under the age of five, and women of reproductive age, 15 to 49 years,” Dr Noor Ani explained.
NHMS 2022: MCH was a cross-sectional study using a complex study design with two-stage stratified random sampling.
The survey involved all states and Federal Territories in Malaysia to produce nationally representative data. Face-to-face interviews were carried out by trained research assistants, together with structured self-administered questionnaires (SAQ) and clinical and anthropometric measurements by the nurses.
Topic covered:
- Care during pregnancy
- Care during childbirth
- Women reproductive health
- Vaccination
- Nutritional status
- Infant & young child feeding practice
- Child development
- Child diseases
- Child discipline
- Child oral health
- Anaemia
A point-of-care finger-prick blood test was also done at selected health clinics. A total of 25,414 respondents participated in the survey, representing a response rate of 74.9 per cent from a total of 1,029 enumeration blocks (EB) consisting of 13,832 living quarters (LQ).
Given NHMS 2022: AHS and MCH findings, Dr Noor Ani said the MoH had planned various initiatives to tackle the issues. – The Health