Doctors Should Be Assigned Evenly, Not Building More Hospitals

There's a recent call from the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) calling on the government to build more hospitals to ensure jobs for doctors in this nation. To us, the MMA is wrong about calling for more hospitals to be build but not exactly in the overall situation.

First, the government has already build so many modern hospitals nationwide. Be it district hospitals or sub-district based hospitals. These modern hospitals are well-equipped (in most of them). The only thing is these modern equipped hospitals are not fully-utilized.

Why? Because there are not enough doctors in these hospitals to handle all those modern hospitals. As such, these equipment became some sort of white elephant, in the end. Where had all those doctors gone to? The Health Ministry tends to assign these doctors or housemen to district and state level hospitals and not those sub-district or rural based hospitals.

Just take an example of the Seberang Jaya Hospital in Central Seberang Perai. It has already got too many doctors and housemen attached over there. Then the modernized and well-equipped Kepala Batas Hospital which is situated at the North Seberang Perai has not enough doctors to receive patients.

As the result of that, many patients who visited the Kepala Batas Hospital are very often referred to the Seberang Jaya Hospital instead as there isn't enough doctors to handle the patients over there. Then, what had become the Seberang Jaya Hospital?

The Seberang Jaya Hospital has became jammed pack almost everyday with doctors and housemen do not even have sufficient space to attend to the overall patients who visited that hospital almost daily. In some consultation rooms, you could see three doctors assigned into one tiny little room with so lack of space to walk by.

Not only the Kepala Batas Hospital is experiencing shortage of doctors, the Bukit Mertajam Hospital too is facing such situation. Why is the ministry neglecting these sub-district level hospitals by assigning all doctors and housemen to the well-known Seberang Jaya Hospital? This what with call, uneven assignment of doctors to these hospitals.

It happens in hospitals of all states as well, apart from the one highlighted in the Penang state. Actually, we had enough doctors nationwide, the only thing is these doctors and housemen are very often assigned to only main or bigger hospitals. As the results of such, you could see some hospitals are jammed pack with patients while the other hospitals have no patients at all.

One more situation that the government ought to look into is the fringe and benefits for these government doctors. After their three years-tied up service with the government, these doctors will leave in drove to the private hospitals in order to gain better prospects and good incomes. We are wondering why is the Health Ministry keep on ignoring such facts.

MMA should look into the other areas as well in order to tackle the situation. The patients' well-being and health are at stake if such situation could not be addressed properly.These are the facts, there are too many doctors concentrated in a few hospitals, smaller hospitals are very often neglected even if these hospitals are new, well-equipped and modern. So, this is one part of the ministry's internal problem of uneven assignment of these medical officers.

The other one, there are also so many doctors in private-owned hospitals and many private clinics in the cities as well. What can the ministry do in order to attract these doctors (from the private hospitals and clinics) back into its fold? Unless the Health Ministry readily admit that they are already out of budget of doing this.

Where is the practice of "Rakyat Didahulukan" in the government and the Health Ministry?