Materia Medica Malaysiana

Rising demand for nurses not met

PETALING JAYA: Public and private nursing colleges cannot meet the rising demand for nurses at present as they can only train about 3,000 nurses yearly, less than half of the figure needed.

Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said at least 8,000 nurses needed to be trained annually to meet the nurse-to-patient ratio of 1:200 for developed countries by 2020.

“This is a big challenge for us as we’ll have to train at least 130,000 nurses over the next 16 years,” he said before presenting diplomas to nursing students at the Assunta Hospital’s Tun Tan Cheng Lock College of Nursing here.

The Government’s 18 nursing colleges could only train 2,000 students while the 16 private colleges and five universities could only accommodate another 1,000, he said.

He said the nation is facing an acute shortage of nurses and currently has a nurse-to-patient ratio of 1:645 compared to Singapore’s 1:203 and Japan’s 1:134.

As of June, there were only 39,232 trained nurses, 75% of whom were employed by the Government.

At least 1,000 registered nurses were working overseas, half of them in the Middle East.

On avian flu, Dr Chua said there were no new cases in chicken or human beings, adding that there were no plans to isolate visitors who come into the country.

However, he said, the Government would upgrade the disease control mechanism and share public health information with neighbouring countries as a precautionary method.

“Because of the emergence of new diseases in recent years such as SARS and avian flu, the World Health Organisation said it is possible there will be a new disease every year,” he said.