Category: Health EN

CAP reiterates its stand that Vaccination for Covid-19 should not be mandatory and people have a right to choose whether to be vaccinated. Recent scientific findings have shown that the Covid-19 vaccines: do not prevent infection or spread of the virus; vaccinated people infected with the Delta variant of Covid-19 may be able to transmit the virus as much as unvaccinated individuals due to...

  The Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) welcomes the Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin’s recent announcement that a field hospital, complete with the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) ward, to accommodate the increasing number of Covid-19 patients in Penang. He had also said that he will discuss with private hospitals to rent out their operating theatres to enable Penang General Hospital (HPP)...

Nano spray guns are commonly used at home and workplaces during this current pandemic but the sanitising liquids available in the market should be investigated by the Health Ministry (MoH). The Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) urges MoH to address this issue urgently because of the widespread use of nano spray guns. Information from MoH on the sanitising liquids for these guns are scant yet...

“Any attempt to solve the ecological crisis within a bourgeois framework must be dismissed as chimerical. Capitalism is inherently anti-ecological. Competition and accumulation constitute its very law of life, a law … summarised in the phrase, ‘production for the sake of production.’ Anything, however hallowed or rare, ‘has its price’ and is fair game for the marketplace. In a...

Consumers are advised to be mindful of buying medications online or through mail-order as some medicines may become unsafe or ineffective from exposure to extreme temperature or humidity during transit from the retailer to you. Many pills and capsules need to be kept away from heat, air, moisture and sunlight because they can be damaged or lose their potency. If a life depends on proper dosage...

The Department of Standards Malaysia is currently soliciting public comments on the draft Malaysian Standard for Undercoating Paint for Gloss Enamel - Specification (Second Revision).  Among the specifications is that the ingredients used in the paint formulation shall not contain lead. We need legally binding controls on lead in all paints as lead is toxic and there is no safe level of lead...

"Pathology is a relatively easy thing to discuss, health is very difficult. This, of course, is one of the reasons why there is such a thing as the sacred, and why the sacred is difficult to talk about, because the sacred is peculiarly related to the healthy. One does not like to disturb the sacred, for in general, to talk about something changes it, and perhaps will turn it into a pathology."...

The Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) urges the government not to be taken in by the tobacco industry’s recent persuasion that the government can collect up to RM250 million in excise tax on nicotine-based e-liquids. The e-liquids are meant for use in Electronic Nicotine Delivery System (ENDS) devices such as vape and e-cigarettes. Here we would pose a hypothetical question for the...

The Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) congratulates the Members of Parliament who took up the issue of Ivermectin, as it is an issue of prime importance. With the escalating number of daily cases, we call upon the government to permit off-label use of Ivermectin by qualified doctors. We would like to point out that about 3.7 billion doses of Ivermectin has been distributed in mass drug...

28 July 2021, Quezon City. As the National Lipstick Day is observed on July 29, a toxics watchdog group issued a red alert following its discovery of dirt cheap lipsticks that are heavily contaminated with lead, a chemical banned in cosmetics. The EcoWaste Coalition has warned consumers, especially women of reproductive age, against the proliferation of what it calls as “poison lipsticks,”...