More Dieticians/ Nutritionists Please!

Malaysia needs more dieticians to educate society to lead a healthy lifestyle. Actually, I am more at ease with the term nutritionist campared to a dietician. A nutritionist normally has a Science degree and advocates a balanced diet on a sustainable basis. The term dietician could be a misnomer as most people's idea of going on a diet is a short term strategy that is not sustainable. Being on a short term diet means you lose weight fast and put it back on even faster when you return to your bad eating habits. 

A recent Health Ministry survey revealed that more than 43% of Malaysian adults were overweight or obese, twice the figure a decade ago. More amd more people are getting the lifestyle illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.

Therefore the nutritionists have an important role to play to get people to change their eating habits and lead a healthy lifestyle. Malaysians love to eat. They eat anytime and anywhere. Eating and feasts are normal pastimes of most people.More often, the menu during feasts are either too sweet, too salty or too fatty. Nevertheless, they are enjoyed by most. It would seem to be preposturous to serve healthy food!

This is indeed a challenging task for Malaysia's current 500 dieticians. Even though the six public universities and one private university produce about 180 dietetic graduates a year, this is not enough to cater for the 26m+ population.

It was reported that 288 posts of dieticians were at the Health Ministry, 100 in the private sector, 50 in the universities and the rest on the food and sports industry.

Of the 288 posts of dieticians in the Ministry, only 226 were presently filled, and 65 of 137 government hospitals and special medical institutions had no dieticians.
In our hospitals, the current ratio is approximately one dietician to 115 beds, but the ratio for the more developed countries is one dietician to 50 beds.
The Health Ministry is filling up dieticians posts in the Health Clinics to promote and educate on dietary care and maybe stall the increase in the number of patients with diabetes, cardiovascular disease and hypertension in the future. The dieticians are expected to give patients the proper nutritional assessment, diet prescription, dietary advice and follow up to prevent  a lot of them from ending up with diabetic complications.