Too many Malaysians are dying

Too many Malaysians are dying

It’s necessary for the Minister of Health to explain the high number of excess deaths in Malaysia

Murray Hunter

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There is a major public health crisis in Malaysia going on. More Malaysians are dying now than during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to excess mortality statistics. Excess mortality measures the number of deaths from all causes in a year, as compared with an average death rate over the previous five year period.

According to the Ministry of Health (MOH), the excess mortality rate remained low at 2.4% (+7,914), during the Covid-19 pandemic, between March 2020 and December 2021. However, statistics show that since the pandemic excess mortality in Malaysia has risen dramatically to levels between 2-48%, averaging somewhere around 20% during the period January 2022 to May 2023.

According to Our World in Data, this trend has been continuing, although September 2023 showed excess deaths at 4 percent about the expected level. This is still much higher than the excess deaths through 2020-2021. This is corroborated with the Ministry of Health’s own graph (shown above). Even the crude historical death rate has jumped up from 5.139 in 2020 to 5.568 in 2024. This needs urgent investigation as to why Malaysia’s death rate is on the increase.

Malaysia is now suffering from a hidden pandemic. This is not unique to Malaysia, similar excess mortality rates are occurring across the world, and have not been explained. This unusually high excess death rate since the pandemic should be of extreme concern to the MOH. However, there has been no expressions of concern or explanations coming from the Director General of the MOH, Dr Muhammad Radzi Abu Hassan, or the Minister for Health Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad.

Even Code Blue’s Dr Musa Mohd Nordin shows through his figures that there is a massive time lag in the data Malaysians are being given. His comments were about 2020-2021, which is historical and doesn’t reflect the crisis in deaths that has gone on in 2023-4.

Dr Musa Mohd Nordin: Misleading on excess deaths 

Without a thorough exploration into why so many Malaysians are currently dying, we don’t know what is killing so many people and how to stop this. Covid-19 doesn’t explain these excess deaths, as they appear to be unrelated.

These current excess death rates are far above what existed during the Covid-19 pandemic and are akin to a war or major terrorist act in magnitude.

The government must make this problem a top priority.

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