Materia Medica Malaysiana

Four more government hospitals to get MRI scanners

Four more government hospitals – in Malacca, Seremban, Kota Baru and Kota Kinabalu – will be equipped with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines by this year, bringing the total to 17.
MRI is a special technique which gives images of internal structures of the body.
Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said that at present private hospitals had 36 scanners while university hospitals had three.
“Although the number of MRI scanners in government hospitals is considerably lower than in the private sector, they are well distributed,” he said in his speech read out at the launch of Assunta Hospital’s MRI Centre here yesterday.
His speech was read out by Deputy Director-General of Health Datuk Dr Abdul Gani Mohamed Din.
Dr Chua said there was a concentration of MRI facilities in the Klang Valley, where 23 of the total of 52 scanners were located.
He said this gave the Klang Valley a ratio of six to seven scanners per million people, compared with three to 3.5 scanners per million in other areas.