Expert: Our health literacy likely to worsen due to fake news

PETALING JAYA: Malaysians’ health literacy is predicted to worsen, given the amount of misinformation being spread on social media, says the Health Ministry’s deputy director for the Non-Communicable Disease Section, Dr Feisul Idzwan Mustapha.

“The National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2019 found that in general, 35.1% of adults have low health literacy, 28% have low health literacy in managing medical issues, 32.3% have low health literacy related to disease prevention activities, while 27% have low health literacy in health promotion and healthy lifestyle practices.