The 11th Malaysian Conference on Healthy Ageing (MCHA 2026) is organised by the Malaysian Healthy Ageing Society at the Sabah International Convention Centre in Kota Kinabalu, opening with a pre-conference workshop on 10 September 2026 followed by the main scientific programme. The 2026 edition is themed around revolutionising healthy ageing, and is run in collaboration with the Malaysian Medical Association, the Sabah Healthy Ageing Society and the Malaysian Society of Geriatric Medicine.
Malaysia is ageing quickly, and the conference exists to move the clinical conversation upstream — from managing frailty and its complications to preventing them. The programme brings together geriatricians, family physicians, internists, endocrinologists, rehabilitation physicians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dietitians, pharmacists and nurses working with older adults, alongside researchers in ageing biology and public health planners.
Content across the meeting typically covers sarcopenia and muscle health, falls prevention and bone health, cognitive decline and dementia care, polypharmacy and deprescribing, nutrition and protein requirements in later life, metabolic health and diabetes in older adults, hormonal and reproductive ageing, sleep, mental health and social isolation, palliative and end-of-life planning, and the emerging science of longevity medicine and biological ageing markers. The pre-conference workshop day gives space for skills-based teaching — comprehensive geriatric assessment, functional testing and practical rehabilitation technique — before the plenary programme begins.
Holding the conference in Kota Kinabalu places it in East Malaysia, where access to specialist geriatric services is thinner than on the peninsula, and the organisers use the location to draw attention to rural and regional ageing care. A conference brochure, the scientific programme and abstract and registration information are published on the MCHA 2026 website, and the meeting is supported by a broad group of pharmaceutical, nutrition and healthcare partners.
For clinicians in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, where population ageing is arriving rapidly and geriatric services are still being built, MCHA offers a practical model of how a comparable health system is organising its response.
