Government Still Committed To Built Children Hospital

JOHOR BAHARU, Aug 18 (Bernama) -- The government is still committed to a promise it made many years back to build a hospital specifically for children, Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said Friday.
He said the promise, made by former Health Minister Datuk Chua Jui Meng, had never been forgotten as even the Prime Minister's late wife Datin Seri Endon Mahmod had tried to push for it to be build.
"There is also the question of paediatricians. The country is short of them. Our estimate puts their current number at around 550 and 216 of them are with the Ministry of Health," he said.
Dr Chua said this when speaking at the 1st Asean Congress of Paediatric Surgery and the 28th Malaysian Paediatric Association Annual Scientific Congress here.
He was also responding to the events organising co-Chairman, Datuk Dr Zakaria Zahari, who in his speech urged the government to fulfil the promise it made.
Dr Chua said that in Australia there was a ratio of one paediatrician to about 5,000 children below the age of 18 years.
"If we were to apply this ratio here, it would mean that we are presently short of about 1,500 paediatricians. To achieve this ratio by 2020, we would need to produce at least 140 paediatricians per year from now, whereas our present production is only about 35 per year at most," he said.
He said that currently there were only 10 government hospitals that provide paediatric services and the nation's first Department of Paediatric Surgery was only formed at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital in 1991.
"Even now, most surgical problems involving children outside of the major hospitals are still being performed by general surgeons. This problem is compounded by the fact that there are presently very few full-time paediatric surgeons in public service," he added.