SETIA ALAM: After two years of combined operation, the newly-built National Institute of Health (NIH) complex was launched by Yang di-Pertuan Agong Al-Sultan Abdullah Ri'ayatuddin Al-Mustafa Billah Shah on Tuesday (Aug 9).
His Majesty said that the complex would be a new benchmark for the health sector to benefit the rakyat.
“I would like to congratulate the Health Ministry (MOH) for establishing the NIH complex that could finally put institutions under one roof,” His Majesty said in his speech at the event here.
NIH consists of six research institutions and secretariats namely the Institution for Medical Research (IMR), Institution for Public Health (IPH), Institution for Clinical Research (ICR), Institution for Health Management (IMH), Institution for Health Systems Research (IHSR), and Institute for Health Behavioural Research (IHBR).
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the six institutions, which have been operating since 2019, with a total workforce of 1,486 employees, have their own field of expertise.
“IMR, established in 1900 and being the oldest institution, focused on biomedical research that includes studies on contagious diseases, cancer, allergies and immunology.
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers in the IMR have not only successfully prepared the reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test protocols, but also introduced the MyR-Number system that generate daily infectivity rate (Rt) of Covid-19 in real-time,” he said during his speech at the launching here.
He added that IPH conducts the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) to supervise Malaysians’ health trends.
Khairy added, moving forward, NIH planned to increase its research on precision medicine, vaccines, traditional medicine and complementary, birth cohort, and the National Quality Improvement Programme.
“Research by NIH will also leverage on the existing data diversity by developing the Big Data Analytics ecosystem for MOH’s digitalisation strategic planning 2021-2025,” he added.
