A recent survey has revealed that slightly over 60% of Filipino domestic workers in Macau require more education on how to stay healthy, otherwise known as “health literacy.”
Led by the Kiang Wu Nursing College of Macau, and in collaboration with Caritas Macau and several religious organizations, the survey gathered 379 valid questionnaire responses between November 2020 and March 2021. The questionnaire was distributed online in Tagalog.
Respondents’ health literacy was graded after they gave self-evaluated answers to questions asked in the questionnaire.
On its website, the US Health Resources and Services Administration defines health literacy as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information needed to make appropriate health decisions.”
According to the government agency, low health literacy is more prevalent among: older adults, minority populations, those who have low socio-economic status and medically underserviced people.
Of the respondents, 97% are women. About half of the respondents hold at least a university degree. They have been resident in Macau for 6.1 years on average. Their average age was 43.7 years.
The survey calculated the average grade of health literacy of respondents at 38.4. A grade below 33 implies limited health literacy. The college pointed out that Macau has the lowest health literacy grade of seven Asian jurisdictions, namely Macau, Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia and Taiwan.
Low health literacy implies that the respondents have less access to, as well as less understanding of, poorer judgment about and make less use of local health information. Those respondents who evaluated their own knowledge of English as poorer received lower grades in health literacy. The survey also discovered that younger respondents generally have more limited knowledge of how to live a healthy lifestyle.
The greatest concerns affecting respondents were emotional stress, sleep problems and chronic pain, complaints mentioned in between 60% and 90% of responses.
The respondents rely mostly on Philippine official channels in obtaining health-related information, ahead of Macau official channels and social media platforms. It may be concluded that health authorities in Macau could do more to educate Filipinos in Macau on health.
Public health doctor Leong Iek Hou from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has previously pointed out that local authorities rely heavily on the English media in disseminating knowledge and information on health to non-Chinese-speaking communities.
The survey team stressed that, since a large number of Filipino workers work in household settings in the city, their health literacy is critical to the families they serve.
