Materia Medica Malaysiana

Health dept contacts doc who wants to help govt

SHAH ALAM: The Selangor State Health Department has contacted private practitioner Dr K. Balachandran to advise him how he can serve part-time in government hospitals and clinics.

At the same time, the department said it regretted the inconvenience faced by the doctor who claimed to have been given the runaround by various government agencies and associations when he wanted to respond to the Health Ministry’s call to serve part-time in government hospitals.

State health director Dr Ang Kim Teng said Dr Balachandran’s difficulty in registering for the service announced by the ministry last month was due to “miscommunication and failure to contact the unit concerned on the service.”

Dr Ang said this in response to a report in The Star last Wednesday that the private doctor was facing difficulty in offering his services to help ease the shortage of doctors in government hospitals.

Dr Balachandran claimed that there was a lack of information on the scheme despite contacting the state health department, the Klang district health department, the Health Ministry as well as the Malaysian Medical Council and the Malaysian Medical Association.

Dr Ang said the department got in touch with Dr Balachandran and forwarded to him a copy of the ministry’s guidelines on “Utilisation of Private Doctor Service in Health Clinics”.

“We thank Dr Balachandran for offering his services and we shall be pleased to process his application as soon as we receive it,” Dr Ang said.

The guideline which contains relevant details pertaining to the scheme is also available on the ministry’s website at www.moh.gov.my.