Materia Medica Malaysiana

KL's Health Ministry to undergo a revamp

KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia's Health Ministry, its agencies and government hospitals are to be revamped with two priorities in mind: Keeping up with the public's rising expectations and cutting down on waiting time.

The energetic new Health Minister, Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek, announced this in an interview published yesterday.

Today, he will discuss the concerns of medical officers when he meets the Malaysian Medical Association.

It's a busy start for the onetime Johor state councillor, who has only just been elected to Parliament: Datuk Dr Chua inherits the Labis seat once held by Datuk Seri Ling Liong Sik, retired president of the Malaysian Chinese Association.

The medical doctor's speedy takeover at the Health Ministry then unseated another capable Chua, Datuk Chua Jui Meng.

Now he's staking out new ground confidently, saying ministry funds would be channelled towards providing quality treatment, better medicine and upgrading hospital equipment rather than building more hospitals.

'Any mismatch, like building more hospitals than necessary, will be at the expense of the rest,' he explained in a report in The Star.

Dr Chua said the 124 hospitals and more than 4,000 clinics nationwide, which had made health-care facilities available within a 5km radius for all Malaysians, were already adequate to meet the needs of the people.

Similarly, a revamp of the ministry's workforce - which included 1,000 doctors and 27,000 nurses - was to achieve optimal usage of the manpower available.

'Unlike building hospitals, which only takes between three and four years, it takes about seven years to train doctors,' said Dr Chua. 'Many people like to be doctors but not all will qualify or have the passion to serve the ill.'

He said a task force headed by his deputy, Datuk Abdul Latiff Ahmad, would come up with some solutions at the end of this month on how to bring about more efficient delivery of health-care services.

On Malaysia's continuing shortage of doctors - some 3,000 positions go unfilled - he said the situation had improved.

The shortage of doctors has meant delays in patients being attended to.

But Dr Chua compared the present ratio of one doctor for every 1,200 people with the ratio at Independence of a doctor for every 10,000.

That ratio would be further improved to one for every 650 people between 2015 and 2020.

As for retaining doctors in government service, he said the government cannot match the salaries of the private sector but that doctors enjoyed the highest starting salary compared with other professions in the civil service. -- Bernama, TheStar/Asia News Network