Sabah warned over private hospital plan

Star: KOTA KINABALU: Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai has cautioned the Sabah government about its plans to set up a private hospital as it is an expensive business.
“I would say that to build a hospital is easy but to maintain or run one is not easy.
“I will say that now, we are already short of manpower in the Government itself. It is a very expensive investment. So, they must be cautious,” Liow said.
Liow was responding to Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman’s announcement that the state was going ahead with plans to refurbish abandoned Wisma Khidmat here and convert it into a hospital at a cost of RM100mil to overcome the bed shortage at Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), whose tower block had been declared unsafe.
In making it clear that the ministry had its own plans with the purchase of the Sabah Medical Centre (SMC), Liow hinted that the ministry was not keen in getting involved with the state’s plan for a private hospital to assist the QEH.
“If the state is going to build it, then the state must run it and maintain it.
“We have our own plans with the purchase of SMC,” he told reporters after officially renaming Likas Hospital to the Sabah Women and Children’s Hospital here.
He said the RM280mil purchase of the SMC building was in the final stages with the sales and purchase agreement to be signed by the end of the month.
Liow said tenders were also being called for the construction of the QEH twin tower block, which would take at the most 30 months to complete.
He said there would be an additional 600 beds available at the twin tower block.
Earlier, he said the renaming of Likas Hospital was to focus on health care for women and children in Sabah, where mortality rates were higher than the national average.
Liow said there were 28 deaths for every 100,000 mothers and this figure could reach above 60 if foreigners were taken into account.
“We want to push this figure down towards the national average of 10.8 deaths per 100,000,” he said, adding that the child mortality rate was 10.8 deaths per 1,000 births in Sabah, which the ministry hoped to reduce to 6.5 deaths per 1,000.