In 2024, Universitas Brawijaya will open a Sabbatical Leave program for lecturers. This program facilitates lecturers to be abroad for a maximum of 3 months. The goals are lecturers can conduct more intensive research without being disturbed by teaching duties and provide opportunities for lecturers to collaborate with researchers or academics at international institutions, thus enabling the exchange of ideas, research collaboration, and expanding professional networks.
The Sabbatical Leave program has been utilized by a Lecturer at the Faculty of Dentistry (FKG) Dr. Yuanita Lely Rachmawati, drg., MKes to conduct a research collaboration with Prof. Tuti Ningseh Mohd Dom from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
The research study taken was to explore dental health literacy and the utilization of dental health service facilities for migrant workers in Malaysia. The migrant workers who are the focus of the research are domestic workers. This study was conducted because according to the World Migration Report 2020, in 2019 as many as 37 million Indonesians worked abroad, with an estimated 1.67 million people working in Malaysia in 2022.
According to The World Bank in 2017, the number of Indonesian migrant workers in the domestic sector ranked the highest at 32%. From the various problems found in Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia, information or research related to their dental health is not yet available.
Currently, domestic workers in Malaysia have an official organization called PERTIMIG (Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers Association) as a forum to accommodate their aspirations.
With the help of Nasrikah and Bariyah, the organization administrators, Dr. Yuanita was able to correspond with domestic workers in Malaysia.
In addition to corresponding, Dr. Yuanita also had the opportunity to educate domestic workers who gathered in a routine meeting on (8/9/2024) at the PERTIMIG Secretariat Office, Jalan Raja Muda Abdul Aziz, Kampung Baru, 50300 Kuala Lumpur. The educational activity was also broadcast live on PERTIMIG’s Facebook. This educational activity received a positive response from PERTIMIG’s administrators and members.
“Knowledge of dental health needs to be known to avoid illness, because the cost of going to the dentist is expensive and here we don’t have dental health insurance,” said Bariyah. (*/UB PR/ Trans. Iir)
