MMA wants govt to rectify past mistakes, overproduction of medical grads

Malaysian Medical Association President Dr Koh Kar Chai has called on the present administration to rectify past mistakes such as the overproduction of medical graduates.

He said that the fact that there are 22,000 doctors on contract with the government is the result of poor policies of the past.

"Higher Education Minister Noraini Ahmad has mentioned that a total of 2,967 medical students have graduated from local institutions of higher learning in 2020.

"According to her, there needs to be an average of 4,000 new doctors every year in order to achieve the target ratio of 1 doctor for every 400 population by 2025. She said this is according to the Health Ministry’s 2016-2020 strategic plan.

"However, it appears that the number of foreign medical graduates returning home, which matches the number of local medical graduates, seems to have been left out of the equation," said Koh in a statement.

He said that this has led to an unhealthy imbalance in the job market and the country’s aspiration, adding that the issue of our neglected contract doctors is there for all to see.

"Has one forgotten that the current lot of contract doctors arose out of the fact that there was a mushrooming of medical schools and medical programmes over the years?

"This coupled with the large number of foreign medical institutions given recognition led to a rise in the uncontrollable number of new medical graduates to the extent that the Health Ministry was not able to offer them adequate positions for houseman training," he added.

Moratorium being ingored?

Koh said that the Health Ministry recently had a discussion on the planning of healthcare human resources but that the MMA was not called even after the group was promised by the ministry to be included.

"There is a moratorium on the number of new medical schools and medical programmes at the moment and we were made to understand that this moratorium will be extended further.

"However, the statement that the Higher Education Ministry was updating the approval mechanism for the establishment of new faculties and the offering of medical programmes through the establishment of the Technical Committee for the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Dental Surgery programmes has left us confused," he said.

Koh said if indeed the moratorium is being ignored, Malaysia will continue to see the issue of thousands of medical officers on contract as we are seeing today.

"The MMA had in 2010, warned about the overproduction of medical graduates as a result of a mushrooming of medical schools.

"We wish to remind once again that out of the 23,000 medical officers who were placed under contract since the contract system was introduced in 2016, only around 1,000 were given permanent posts.

"The same government that closed its eyes to the mushrooming of medical schools and programmes had also introduced the contract system, and this is a result of poor human resource planning and poor policies of the past," he said.

"Some of the ministers who were part of the government then are still present in today's cabinet line-up. We wish to throw a challenge to the government of the day to prove they are any different.

"Correct the mistakes of the past while the opportunity to do so still exists. Resolve the issues or be labelled a failure by the people," said Koh.- Mkini