Emergency opens more avenues to fight Covid-19: Health DG

 

The proclamation of emergency to fight Covid-19 has been helpful to the Health Ministry in several ways, according to Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

The Health director-general said that the emergency ordinance has opened up more avenues which were unavailable under the existing Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342).

For one, it allows the government to move around doctors between facilities according to situational needs.

"This ordinance helps the Health Ministry to further strengthen Act 342. The Act as it is has its weaknesses, as many (provisions) were drafted in 1988. Back then, the ordinance did not even have states specified, only areas.

"So by using the emergency ordinance, we widen (its use). For example, redistribution of doctors from one facility to another.

"The ordinance has allowed for doctors to be moved (freely) between facilities, be it from a private hospital to a government hospital, or from government to private," he told journalists at an online media briefing session today. 

According to Noor Hisham, under the law, doctors are bound to the place of work stated in their Annual Practising Certificate (APC). 

Under the emergency, the ministry can also loan medicine needed to fight the pandemic to other facilities.

"For example, private hospitals do not have medicine to treat Covid-19 because before this, they did not treat Covid-19 patients.

"So now, the ministry can loan it to them, and they can replace the medicine later," he added.

Noor Hisham was referring to the cooperation between the Health Ministry and private hospitals, which is in the pipeline, to help ease the country's healthcare system overloaded with heavy daily positive coronavirus cases.

Besides issues of redistributing human resources and medicinal products, the emergency gives Putrajaya the power to compel private hospitals into helping the ministry in fighting the pandemic.

However, Noor Hisham said that they are still using the "carrot" approach, by holding discussions with private hospitals rather than doing things by force.

Expect number of cases to go down to double digits by May

Noor Hisham revealed that the government may only enforce the movement control order (MCO) for a month, before replacing it with a more relaxed conditional MCO.

The latter may go up to another three months to bring down the number of Covid-19 cases.

He added that the MCO cannot be prolonged due to its adverse effects on the country's economy.

"We expect it to be for four weeks. We do not want to prolong the MCO as it will have (a negative) impact on the economy. We need to balance between life and livelihood."

With the MCO and conditional MCO, Noor Hisham said they are hoping to be able to lower the number of daily cases to double digits.

The Health Ministry's projection puts May 11 as the date they can achieve this.

For the record, Putrajaya has started imposing the second round of MCO since Jan 13, after daily positive cases continue to be an alarming rate.

It was first imposed on six states but had since expanded across the country, except for Sarawak.

Meanwhile, during the media briefing, Noor Hisham sought to clarify with the public that his statements and views aired on the pandemic are not his personal opinions but rather came from the Health Ministry team collectively.

This came as some resorted to attacking the health director-general personally over advice he relayed to the government.

"I may be the face of the Health Ministry, but I am only the messenger of the experts that you see today," he said.

For every daily briefing that he provides to the public, there are at least 150 other officers working behind the scenes to prepare the information, Noor Hisham added. 

"But sometimes people are attacking me. But it is not me (personally) who gave the views. The views that I give to the National Security Council are that of Health Ministry experts." 

While Noor Hisham did not specifically mention what issue he was responding to, it came during a time of criticisms abound against the and the government for imposing the emergency and stricter movement control. - Mkini