KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 10 — Bandar Kuching MP Kelvin Yii urge the new government to have a comprehensive inter-ministry network to provide better healthcare access in rural Sarawak and Malaysia.

Yii pointed out that there have been two recent cases of death in Sarawak allegedly due to lack of access of healthcare services in their respective areas, which required a transparent and comprehensive enquiry and investigation.

"The first case involves a baby allegedly died in its mother’s arms while travelling on a bus from Julau to Kuching for treatment.

"While the other involves an elderly woman from Lawas died before an ambulance that was supposed to send her to hospital could go through the gate of Sungai Tujoh Immigration, Customs, Quarantine and Security (ICQS),” he said in a statement.

Yii said that is saddening to hear cases of people being deprived of their right to healthcare, especially people in the rural area, even at this day.

He pointed out that this is a clear symptom of long-term under-investment and neglect in our healthcare services especially in rural areas.

"However, to properly address this issue, we need to address the different social determinants of health (SDoH) which includes addressing poverty, providing basic amenities, equitable development and many other which may not only fall under the Ministry of Health.

"That is why, moving forward to resolve health inequities, there has to be a comprehensive Federal-State inter-ministry and inter-agency framework to come up with a holistic blueprint to properly address all the different social determinants of health so no one is left behind,” he said.

Yii hope that the new Health Minister and Deputy Minister will spearhead this inter-governmental agency to identify issues and then allocate the necessary resources to better equip the healthcare facilities in rural areas, and also ensure development in surrounding ecosystem.

He also said is important to provide all the necessary support to existing healthcare staff in the area.

"This is to ensure that these facilities have the necessary specialist, manpower, basic amenities and development so even in case of emergency, patient-transfer can be done in most efficient manner without unnecessary hurdles,” he said.

Yii said that all this requires political will and more importantly, for ministries not to work in silos anymore.

"We may need to ‘re-think’ how we do healthcare especially in rural areas as we want to ensure that all Malaysians will get access to quality universal healthcare and such incidents do not happen again.

"No babies in a country with supposed universal healthcare coverage should die in their mother’s arms on the way to the hospital,” he added.