National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) was first initiated in 1986. Its objectives were to supplement existing data on the pattern of health problems, health needs and expenditure on health in the community to enable the Ministry of Health to review priorities and activities of programmes, plan future allocation of resources and evaluate the impact of strategies.
The scopes covered in the survey were morbidity rates, health service utilizations and their barriers, health expenditure and their sources, immunization coverage, acute respiratory illness, hypertension, angina, smoking, diabetes, astma and injuries. The survey only focused in Peninsular Malaysia with response rate in different modules ranging from 92 to 100%. The survey was spearheaded by the Institute for Public Health (IPH) and partially supported by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Grant.
The scopes covered in this survey were load of illness, health seeking behaviour, health care consumption cost, health related behaviours (exercise, breast-feeding practices, pap-smear examination, breast examination, smoking, alcohol consumption, obesity, adolescent risky behaviour: smoking, alcohol consumption, drug abuse, sexual practices), specific health problems (hypertension, ischaemic heart disease, diabetes mellitus, medically diagnosed cancer, injury, physical impairments, astman and acuter respiratory inflections), and blood cholesterol level. The NHMS 2 covered whole Malaysia including Sabah and Sarawak. The response rate at Living Quarters (LQ) level was 86.9%.