Comparative study on the rural-urban employment status of low-income individuals (B40 group) with hypertension in Malaysia: The RESPOND study

Background: There is a relationship between poor people being more likely to develop non-communicable diseases. This study was conducted to compare the socio-demographic differences mostly looking at the employment status between urban and rural low-income individuals (B40 group) with hypertension in Malaysia. Material and Methods: The communities were selected from rural and urban populations in four peninsular states. Following a multistage sampling approach, communities in each stratum were selected according to probability proportional to the size and identified based on national census data. Households were randomly selected. Eligible individuals were those aged between 35 and 70 years old, self-reported or identified as hypertensive at screening. Informed consent was taken. A survey using validated questionnaires was conducted. Results: A total of 611 respondents were involved in this study. 308 (49.6%) were from urban and 308 (50.4%) were from rural areas. The characteristics of the sociodemographic from both locations were comparable (p>0.05) except for the job description (p<0.001). There were around 50% worked full-time employment and 75.8% disagree that they lost their job within 6 months. There was no significant difference in household income between urban and rural respondents (p=0.550). Unfortunately, there was only a third of them received regular cash transfers, subsidies or payments through B40 Malaysia and 14.0% of the respondents had no more income after deducting taxes. Conclusion: There were not so many differences in the characteristics of the respondents in both locations except for the job description. It might be helpful for the government in the formulation the policies to reduce the poverty and assist this population to receive medical treatment to control their hypertension.