Importing Tuberculosis Into Malaysia

Malaysia is expected to reach the ageing population status by 2035, where 15 per cent of its total population will be 60 years and older, posing a huge socio-economic and health problem for Malaysia.

This is because this group is economically unproductive and lacks the financial means to lead a simple and decent lifestyle. Malaysian National Population and Family Development Board estimated that more than 500,000 of the 2.4 million senior citizens suffered from the "empty nest syndrome", while 90 per cent of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) contributors could not sustain beyond five years after retirement.

EPF statistics, in 2014 almost 75 per cent of its contributors earned less than RM2,000 per month. The wage depression was partly due to the influx of foreign workers. As at December 2014, there were 6.7 million foreign workers in Malaysia with only 2.2 million legally registered.

The other concern for the country was that the foreigners were bringing in communicable diseases. For example, in 2014, Fomema--the company responsible for medical screening of foreign workers--reported that it detected 24,000 cases of TB.

Out of the 1.27 million legal workers screened for health showed that 3 to 3.5 per cent had TB, and we do not have the health statistics on the 4.2 million undocumented foreigner workers.