KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 20 — The Academy of Medicine of Malaysia (AMM) today welcomed the government’s decision to engage with private sector healthcare providers to ease the Covid-19 burden on public hospitals.

The group also said it is ready to serve and assist the Ministry of Health (MoH) with its Covid-19 management plan.

"We acknowledge that there are many facets that need attention to streamline the public and private healthcare systems effectively and efficiently. This includes but is not limited to, patient coverage, distribution of hospital beds and personal protective equipment, and fair compensation for healthcare workers.

"Coordinating the two healthcare systems is no mean feat, but we are confident in MoH’s ability, in collaboration with the Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) and all relevant stakeholders, to find solutions that will best suit all parties,” the group said.

It added that the collaboration comes in a timely manner as there has been an increase in Covid-19 infections among healthcare workers and hopes the collaboration will help alleviate the risk of infection among them.

"The third wave has almost overwhelmed the health system, thus stretching thin the surveillance and protective measures in place. That said, these are risks which we healthcare workers recognised when we answered the call of duty.

"AMM sees great potential in private-public partnerships helping to mitigate these risks for our frontline healthcare workers in the future,” it added.

The group offered to help conduct virtual workshops for specific departments and specialties to support MoH with capacity building in hospitals nationwide.

"For example, the College of Radiology, AMM will be conducting a webinar on Saturday (January 23) to prepare radiology departments in various hospitals for imaging and managing Covid-19 patients.

"If we collectively mobilise all public and private healthcare resources, we will have sufficient surge capacity to keep the pandemic under control until we achieve herd immunity through widespread vaccination,” the group said.

Yesterday, Malaysia recorded 3,631 Covid-19 cases, bringing the total cumulative cases in Malaysia now to 165,371 cases.

There were also another 14 deaths yesterday, bringing the country’s death toll from the coronavirus to 619.