Materia Medica Malaysiana

Medical support staff also insufficient

KUALA LUMPUR: The country is not only facing a shortage of doctors but also of medical support staff whereby over 20,000 posts are unfilled, said Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek.

Currently, he said, there was a dearth of some 5,000 nurses, 3,300 doctors, 700 medical specialists, 600 pharmacists and 500 dentists.

“So, this shortage is not only of doctors but also of support staff such as dentists and nurses. There are 140,000 positions and 118,000 are filled. The total shortage is 22,000.

“The positions are not filled because there are no people. Efforts have been taken to alleviate the problem,” he said after meeting state Health executive councillors and directors yesterday.

Among the efforts undertaken by the ministry to alleviate the problem was to implement compulsory three-year contract service, hire retired staff for contract work, recruit foreign doctors and increase the number of public and private institutions of higher learning offering medical courses, he said.

“In a year, we can train about 1,000 doctors in the country. There are about 300 who retire or join the private service. The net result is that in a year about 650 doctors are in government service,” he added.

He said about 400 students who completed their compulsory service were sent for specialist training while 1,800 doctors were promoted last year.

“There are still vacancies for promotion especially for specialists. We are also studying the issue of allowance.

“We allow them to work at the accident and emergency unit after working hours so that they can earn extra income, which is RM30 an hour. It is equivalent to what they would earn if they did locum,” he added.

It would be ideal if there was an increase of 1,000 doctors annually and there was one doctor for every 650 people by 2015 compared with the current ratio of one to 1,420 people, he said.

On the National Health Welfare Fund, Dr Chua said clarification had been given to those who attended the meeting yesterday as they did not understand the issue.

He said among the reasons for delays in getting applications approved was that the patients did not state the type of aid they needed for paying private medical fees.

On the 134 units of donated blood which were found contaminated with the HIV virus last year as reported by the National Blood Centre, Dr Chua said the blood had been destroyed.

On the distribution of hospitals and clinics, he said the coming Ninth Malaysia Plan would look into setting up more clinics in Sabah, Sarawak and Terengganu to ensure equal distribution.

On cutting down the waiting time in public hospitals, he said a report being prepared by his deputy, Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad, was expected to be completed within two weeks and it would be presented to the Cabinet.