Diabetes mellitus is one of the ten principal causes of death in 2018, according to the Malaysian 2019 social statistics bulletin. 

Commenting on the report, chief statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin (photo) said hypertension (hypertensive diseases) recorded the highest increase of 73.2 per cent.

“This is followed by chronic lower respiratory diseases (59.5 per cent) and malignant neoplasm that affects the colon, rectum and anus (39.7 per cent),” he said in a statement today.

The social statistics bulletin displays selected social statistics, which are the key indicators for measuring the quality of life and well-being of the people.

This includes key areas, namely population, housing, health, education, employment, welfare services, public safety and recreation.

Meanwhile, Mohd Uzir said death from road accidents in 2018 recorded a decline of 2.4 per cent to 4,391 deaths from 4,499 deaths in 2017.

He said there were 548.598 of road accidents reported to the police in 2018 and only 1.1 per cent involved fatalities.

“Selangor recorded the highest death rate of 1,046 cases while Kelantan recorded the highest number of road accident injury cases with 1,626 cases.

“Putrajaya recorded the lowest number of injury cases and deaths, namely 10 and seven cases respectively,” he said.

According to Mohd Uzir, new motor vehicle registrations recorded an increase of 8.2 per cent in 2018 to 1.22 million compared to 1.13 million in 2017.

“The increase was contributed by public transport (48 percent), followed by commercial vehicles (15.3 percent) and motorcycles (11.5 percent)," he said.

In terms of education, the bulletin shows there are 4.92 million primary and secondary school students and 416,886 teachers in 10,486 schools nationwide.

- Bernama