Najib Welcomes The Setting Up Of Asian Neuro Centre

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 27 (Bernama) -- Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak welcomed the setting up of the Asian Neuro Centre which he said could help reduce the workload of public hospitals as well as the waiting time for neurosurgery patients.
The deputy prime minister said the Health Ministry statistics showed that only six out of 121 public hospitals in Malaysia were equipped with neurosurgical facilities.
Although the ministry was working hard to improve the health services related to neurology and neurosurgery, it was still unable to fulfil the demand due to the increasing number of patients compared with the low number of neurologists and nerosurgeons, he said.
As such, the establishment of Asian Neuro Centre (ANC) was timely to fill the ever growing gap, he said when launching the centre, here Thursday.
"Being an advanced neurosurgery centre, ANC will be able to perform neurosurgeries using the image-guided radio surgery, neuro interventional and other complex treatments for neuorological disorders and ANC can be accredited as a referral centre for government hospitals to help reduce the workload," he said.
The ANC, to be built in Subang by a private company, is modelled as a premier tertiary care hospital providing specialised neurological care, treatment and rehabilitation and IS scheduled to commence operations in 2007.
Najib said there were 7,900 neurosurgery patients in Malaysia last year and with more people suffering from neuro disorders like head trauma and stroke, it had become among the top five medical maladies in Malaysia.
He said that in 2001, a total of 4,653 neurosurgeries were performed at public hospitals with 50 per cent at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital while another 2,500 neurosurgeries were performed at private hospitals.
"The interesting fact is that all these surgeries were carried out only by 39 neurosurgeon in the country," he added.
Najib said the government was looking into this matter seriously as it was the government's vision to provide better healthcare at a reasonable price to the people.
Thus, the challenge for ANC was to provide quality specialised services in the field of neurology at an affordable price without compromising its quality of service and at the same time upholding its philosophy of being a patient-centric hospital, he said.
At the function, Najib presented two cheques for RM64,000 from donors to two neuro patients, Leow Cin Dee, 14, and Siti Rashidah Mohamed, Samin, 12, for the purchase of medical equipment.
Leow suffers from intractable epilepsy, a neuro disorder contracted at the age of four, while Siti Rashidah recently had a spinal cord tumour removed, and now requires a cervical implant for support.