Materia Medica Malaysiana

Ministry deregisters five Indon clinics

KUALA LUMPUR: Five clinics in Indonesia have been deregistered for falsely declaring some foreign workers bound for Malaysia as fit.

Another nine clinics in the country and one each in Cambodia and India have been placed under close scrutiny after stern warnings were issued to them.

Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said some of the clinics gave a healthy person's X-ray results and blood samples to ill workers.

“Some clinics overseas are not up to mark,” he said, adding that such cases were discovered during random checks on foreign workers upon their arrival.

The Government has approved 81 clinics in nine countries to carry out pre-entry medical examinations on foreign workers.

However, random checks on 16,899 workers (or 5% of the total number of foreign workers entering the country) last year found that 840 were suffering from communicable diseases, mainly Hepatitis B (52%), tuberculosis (12%), syphilis (7%), drug abuse (7%) and HIV infection (1.5%).

Dr Chua said the Government was now studying a proposal to set up a supervising and monitoring agency in the countries of origin to screen the workers.

“We are looking at a proposal from the private sector in Indonesia on the setting up of a surveillance and enforcement mechanism to curb fraud,” he told reporters after launching the Foreign Workers Medical Examination and Monitoring Agency's (Fomema) new logo and office here yesterday.

Currently, the monitoring mechanism is only available locally and managed by Fomema – an agency given a 15-year concession to examine and monitor the health of all foreign workers prior to their yearly visa renewal.

Dr Chua said Fomema's screening process was effective because the “unfit” rate among foreign workers showed a reduction with every visa renewal – 3.2% among first-timers compared to 1.4% among those with repeated renewals.

At the launch, Fomema announced a new on-line system for employers to register their foreign workers for medical examinations and to check the status through SMS (short message service) later.

The new features would cut waiting time by half during medical examinations and do away with repeated visits to Fomema offices.