Medical tourism not healthy

Star: KUALA LUMPUR: Overall quality of healthcare in the country will suffer if medical tourism is allowed to sap medical staff in public hospitals, health experts warn.
North Carolina’s Chapel Hill University’s Maternal and Child Health associate professor Trude Bennett said the glamour and profitability of medical tourism tended to “crowd out” public health.
“Government resources such as land, financial subsidies and tax incentives tend to be diverted to start up private facilities with high technology.
“Meanwhile public health services and primary care will be left to languish,” said Bennett in her speech on medical tourism at the Health Systems in Transition workshop on Thursday.
University Malaya Medical Centre infectious disease head Prof Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman added that the lure of medical tourism could further lead to brain drain, resulting in the lack of senior doctors and specialists to mentor younger medical staff.
“When that happens, the quality of staff produced would be low and those who leave for the private sector too would be of low quality.
“Without a check-and-balance on medical tourism, the public and the private sector would be affected as well,” said Dr Adeeba.
On whether private specialists could set aside some time to return to the public sector to teach young doctors, Dr Adeeba said such a scheme had worked well in Australia but not Malaysia.
“Here, the specialists tend to focus more on their own practice and less on the teaching part,” she said.
Universiti Sains Malaysia Women’s Development Research Centre director Prof Datin Dr Rashidah Shuib said going to private hospitals was not an equitable choice for the poor.
“There must be some guiding principles and not just wealth creation,” she said, adding that the Government’s policy on medical tourism needed to be debated.