PERIKATAN Nasional should follow through on the former government’s plans of revealing the findings of an investigation into a 2016 fire at Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Baru that claimed six lives, said former health minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad.

Dzulkefly’s comments follow a second fire at the hospital on Sunday and a police investigation into the editor of health website CodeBlue for writing about the report’s findings.

PN should also implement the short- and long-term recommendations of the report, including rewiring the entire facility and building an ambulatory care centre to ease congestion, Dzulkefly said.

The previous government also approved plans to build a second hospital for Johor Baru, said Dzulkefly, who served the Pakatan Harapan administration.

PH was preparing to release the 2016 findings before it was ousted in the February coup by PN, he said.

“The 2016 inquiry panel report should be revealed to the public as it was a decision arrived at and taken by the previous cabinet.

“At the Health Ministry’s post-cabinet meeting, we were, in fact, planning to execute that decision,” Dzulkefly told The Malaysian Insight.

“There was no dispute on declassifying the report. The delay was because of the decision to brief the families of the victims first before releasing the report to the public.”

Another reason for the delay was because the ministry was finalising the report’s format, whether to release it digitally or in print.

“But I must hasten to add that we should publish it now, after the previous government declassified the report.”

The 2016 fire was one of the worst in Malaysia’s healthcare sector when six patients died in the intensive care unit.

An inquiry probed into the circumstances behind the fire but the findings have yet to be made public.

CodeBlue editor Boo Su-Lyn was questioned by police on June 26 after the website published findings from the report that among others claimed the hospital’s fire extinguishers were faulty.

Two days after, another fire broke out at the same hospital, this time in one of the women’s wards close to the Mahmoodiah clinic.

Given the fact a second fire has broken out, Dzulkefly said the ministry should implement the inquiry’s recommendations as soon as possible.

“After the first fire, we made some short- and long-term plans for the hospital in accordance with the report’s suggestions.” – July 1, 2020.