.jpg "Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah makes yet another appeal for public cooperation not to lie about having Covid-19 symptoms, stressing ‘we have families’. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon")
KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 27 — Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah was forced to make yet another appeal for total public cooperation after a health frontliner shared her account of an incident that led to her contracting Covid-19 from a patient who withheld information about his symptoms.
The health director-general took to Facebook to write a short but heartfelt statement about the grave risk medical workers face as they work round-the-clock to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, and how they too needed protection from the lethal disease that has killed hundreds.
Dr Noor Hisham said patients who withhold crucial information about their conditions put the lives of health frontliners and their families in danger by raising the chance of infection.
“Don’t LIE to frontliners. WE too need protection, we have friends, we have families,” he wrote.
“Do not sabotage the frontliners.”
A medical doctor had shared her harrowing experience about a patient who lied about his symptoms as he was being screened for the virus, which led to her contracting the disease.
The doctor said the patient did not inform her that he had developed a fever and had been coughing for nearly a week, two of the diseases most common early symptoms.
The doctor said that withholding that crucial information would cause a flawed diagnosis and prevent health workers from deploying the right procedures, in turn raising the risk of infection.
The patient made the disclosure only after a CT scan showed his lungs had signs typically found on Covid-19 positive patients.
The account, posted on the doctor’s Facebook page, was attached to Dr Noor Hisham’s message.