The Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) has agreed in principle to treat Covid-19 patients at their facilities, says Deputy Health Minister I Noor Azmi Ghazali.
The public health system is at its breaking point due to the third wave of Covid-19 which saw the country recorded continuous four-digit Covid-19 cases since November last year.
With this in mind, Noor Azmi (above) said he had chaired a meeting with APHM on Jan 13 to discuss sharing the load.
"In principle, APHM which represents private hospitals had conveyed its intention to work together and ready to treat Covid-19 patients at their facilities.
"I am very satisfied with the discussion and the spirit of collaboration as well as solidarity shown by all parties who attended the meeting," he said in a statement.
The Health Ministry, he said, will seek further discussions with APHM and other stakeholders in the near future to discuss the collaboration.
He reiterated that while initially, the ministry agreed that the treatment of the Covid-19 patients would take place at the government facilities, at the same time, it never prevented any private hospital to offer their treatment service for Covid-19 patients.
Earlier, Malaysiakini reported that the ministry was in the midst of fine-tuning its model to integrate the private sector in the government's Covid-19 response mechanism.
It is understood that the Health Ministry’s Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) has designed a “conceptual model” that would integrate private clinics, e-hailing service providers, private ambulance providers, industries and private hospitals.
It is learned that three of the country's biggest private healthcare providers - IHH Healthcare Bhd, Ramsay Sime Darby Healthcare and KPJ Healthcare Bhd - were briefed by the CPRC on this yesterday.
Last week, Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah warned that the public healthcare system was at “breaking point” under the mounting weight of Covid-19 cases.
Today, another 3,211 new COvid-19 cases were reported.
Due to the seriousness of the situation, the government had renewed the movement control order (MCO) in eight states and federal territories.
The states and federal territories under the MCO are Penang, Selangor, Malacca, Johor, Sabah, and Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan.
The states under the recovery MCO are Perlis and Sarawak (except Kuching, Sibu, and Miri). While the rest of the states are under the conditional MCO. - Mkini
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.