Health Promotion & Education - Kota Star District

HIV/AIDS Programme and PROSTAR.

Programme Sihat Tanpa AIDS Untuk Remeja (PROSTAR)

PROSTAR was formed on the December of 1996, overseeing the severity of HIV infections in this country. Since the first case of HIV was reported in Malaysia back in 1986, reported cases has been rising ever since.

Thus, the ministry of health had introduced PROSTAR with the aim to:-

1. To improve knowledge on HIV/AIDS and its relation to teenagers.
2. To organize effective communication training
3. To promote healthy lifestyle to prevent risk of getting HIV infection.
4. To train students to organize programme for PROSTAR.
5. To produce a generation that is responsible to themselves, and the society.
6. To produce a balanced individual in terms of physical, mental and spiritual.
7. To pass on leadership skill to the students.


PROSTAR has members age ranging from 13-23. These members will carry out activities to attract more secondary school students to join the club in conjunction to the main aim to control and prevent HIV infection from spreading among students. They are guided by facilitators from the school as well as by the Pegawai Kesihatan Daerah (PPK/MOH).

The activities carried out by PROSTAR are 100% sponsored by government. However, the unit also receives technical support from non-governmental organizations. According to the health promotion unit of Kota Star, PROSTAR is active and the membership is keep increasing from time to time. Poor response from other races such as Chinese and Indians is one of the critical challenge faced by this unit. Much activities had been carried out by PROSTAR such as aerobic contest, walk a mile, English quiz and etc.


PROSTAR also helps in handling students who break rules and regulations. They are working hand in hand with Pembimbing Rakan Sebaya (PRS) in handling issues like, smoking, drugs, gangsterism, prostitution etc.

Every member has their own log book. It will record down the activities that are being carried out by them. It will be evaluate by their facilitator and also by PKD from time to time. Members of PROSTAR will be evaluated at the year end calendar by their facilitator according to their log book, and also according to the test that are being carried out to access their knowledge on HIV/AIDS. Facilitator and the PKD also have the responsibility to prepare report on activities that are being carried out in each school monthly. This report is to be submitted to the Pejabat Pendidikan Daerah. Students who achieve good result would be awarded with batch, like diamond batch, gold batch, silver batch, bronze batch, and certificate of appreciation, according to their result.

Programme Doctor Muda :

Programme Doktor Muda is a health programme that is introduced to the primary school students through the concept of empowerment. The objectives of this programme are to:-

-To train students so they know the importance of health issues, which to allow them to
promote health issues to their friends, family members, and community.
-To enable the students to live healthy life
-To allow students to help the community or school authority to perform activities
which are related to health in the school level
-Promote health awareness to the students by the school authority
-Promote importance of parents in paying attentions to their children’s health.
-To strengthen the ties in between the Health Ministry and the Education Ministry in promoting health awareness among the students.


Programme Doktor Muda are doing activities like to lead their friends towards healthy lifestyle, to ensure clean, and safe environment in the school, to help the school authority to carry out activities related to health issues, to inform when there is any health problem occurring, to manage any light injuries that occur among their school mates, to involve in health campaign, visits to health sector and to organize quiz, debate, essay writing competition related to health tissues in the school level. Monitoring of the programme is done by UPK. Pegawai kesihatan handling the UPK will monitor closely the students that are chosen to participate in this programme.

Besides the programmes that are mentioned above, there are other measures that are being carried out with the objective to produce a healthy generation. These measures include anti-smoking campaign, free immunization for students, free dental examination twice a year, and there are also unit that is in-charged of canteen cleanliness and food quality as well as unit vector which will ensure there will be no dengue mosquito breeding in the school area. Beside anti-smoking campaign, there is also regulation to under-aged students (age <18) are banned from smoking. For those who break the regulation, they could be fined under the Akta Pemakanan 1983. School area is also an area that is supposed to be smoke-free. Anyone who is caught smoking in the school area could be fined under Akta Pemakanan 1983.
Carnival Sihat Sepanjang Hayat.

The health promotion unit is also organizes ‘Carnival Sihat Sepanjang Hayat’ to cultivate healthy life style among the residents of Kota Star. Activities such as cooking and sewing contest, futsal, search and destroy and etc had been carried out for every 3 months in Kota Star.