Less than half of govt hospitals have in total just nearly 7,000 specialists, medical experts call for more

KUALA LUMPUR, June 20 — Government hospitals nationwide are in dire need of more specialists to cater to Malaysia’s population, especially in the rural areas with only 6,985 specialist doctors currently in service, Utusan Malaysia reported today.

The Malay daily said, only 70 out of 145 government hospitals in Malaysia provide specialist service while the remaining 75 are routinely visited by these doctors.

Among the medical fields affected include cardiothoracic (heart), oncology (cancer), palliative medicine (cancer), geriatric medicine (elderly disease), neurosurgery (brain), obstetrics (female gynaecology) and gynaecology as well as psychiatry.

President of the Malaysian Association of Public Health Physicians, Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar said the lack of specialist doctors places a burden on patients as they have to travel far from their homes to receive treatment.

“It is time for Malaysia to provide specialist doctors in hospitals. The government needs to identify localities requiring specialist doctors and place at least two or three specialist doctors according to their respective medical disciplines.

“Some patients have to move from rural areas to urban areas to consult with specialist doctors,” he was quoted as saying.

He gave an example of how a patient from Semporna Hospital Sabah needs to travel more than 100 kilometres or more than two hours to go to Tawau after being referred there and it will cost the patient money by travelling.

“The travel cost may be more than RM100 by vehicle, one way. If you need to refer to the main specialist hospital in Kota Kinabalu more than 500km away, patients will have to drive more than 10 hours or use more expensive air transportation,” he said.

Zainal said that if the government is unable to fill the vacancies of specialists in all government hospitals, at least half of the hospitals in each state should be placed as specialists.

“There should be a ratio, for example, if a state has 12 government hospitals, at least six of them have specialist doctors. This is what needs to be focused, don’t focus on the big hospitals in the city alone.

“There are cases where our experts don’t want to serve the government because there are too many patients, so give them an incentive so we don’t lose them,” he said.