THE Health Ministry has never stopped treating or reduced its services for non-Covid-19 patients, especially in emergency cases, during the course of the pandemic, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin told the Dewan Rakyat today.

He said a slew measures have been put in place to ensure that non-Covid-19 patients received the necessary treatments.

This includes mobilising healthcare workers from public and private hospitals to health facilities that do not have specialist services, after-office and weekend hours for operating theatres and specialist clinics at certain hospitals, and optimising non-specialist hospitals and military hospitals for certain surgical procedures.

“Specialists in the Klang Valley have also carried out surgeries at private hospitals when four MOH hospitals were transformed into full Covid-19 hospitals,” the health minister said during the Ministers’ Question Time in the Dewan Rakyat today.

As of the end of July, the ministry had also outsourced 3,974 procedures to private hospitals.

The ministry is also studying the viability of setting up a special hospital for non-Covid-19 patients to carry out procedures that have been postponed, once the full vaccination coverage exceeds 60% and the number of serious Covid-19 cases declines.

Apart from that, it is also looking to expand virtual clinic services to more hospitals and health clinics.

Khairy was responding to a supplementary question by Kesavan Subramaniam (Sg Siput-PH) on how the ministry ensured that non-Covid-19 patients were getting sufficient treatment.

Meanwhile, Khairy said the ministry is also aiming to increase the ratio of hospital beds to 2.08 per population of 1,000 by the end of the 12th Malaysia Plan term.

As of the end of last year, the ratio was 2.01 to a population of 1,000, whereby the number of beds were increased to 65,508 from 55,952 in 2016.

“To achieve this target, the Health Ministry will continue the initiative to increase the number of beds by building new hospitals and upgrading existing facilities,” he said.

“Attention will be given to hospitals with high bed occupancy rate,” he added.

Other factors be taken into account include population density, access to existing health facilities and funding.

Khairy said this in response to Kesavan’s question on the government’s target on increasing bed capacity. – September 14, 2021.