INADEQUATE planning and lack of coordination among agencies led to the unresolved issue of guaranteed jobs for Malaysia’s junior doctors, Prof Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman said today.

The prominent medical expert said the issue fought by the “Hartal Doktor Kontrak” was an oncoming train wreck that had been predicted by many in the field.

“There are too many medical schools, both public and private, and who would dare close some or merge them?” Adeeba said in a webinar hosted by the MIDF Amanah Investment Bank.

The dean of the medicine faculty at the University of Malaya said Malaysia has 31 medical schools compared to only seven in Australia, which also has about the same population as Malaysia.

“This speaks of inadequate human resources planning for the number of hospitals we want to build.

“The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education need to come together as one, and have a system in place.

“It goes back to political will and the ability to resolve and make decisions for the greater good, which seems to be lacking a bit,” Adeeba said.

She added that every parent in Malaysia also desires for their child to be a doctor.

“If their children can’t get a place in a public medical school, for those who can afford it, they are sent to private medical schools, even overseas.

“So we ended up with more doctors at the junior level than we can cope with,” she said.

Adeeba said these doctors just wanted a job guarantee, be trained in the next four to eight years in their time of service and in the end, sit for the exam and be qualified as specialists.

“So it’s not that hard (to grant it) but it needs planning, putting a system in place, and once again, to look beyond the silo of each agency and solve this problem,” she said.

For instance, she said in the past four years of her deanship, she had tried to put in place a national post-graduate specialist programme to ensure a curriculum for each specialty to follow.

On July 26, hundreds of health workers staged a walkout from government hospitals across the nation as a sign of protest against an unfair contract system.

After the strike ended, Health Director-General Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said a special task force led by the Health Ministry (MoH) and the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) is studying the amendments to the Pensions Act to enable permanent posts for contract doctors.

The price of underinvestment 

Adeeba also said that the Covid-19 crisis had illustrated where the nation had gone wrong in the healthcare sector and is paying the price for it.

She highlighted the underinvestment in public healthcare and the introduction of the private healthcare system that led to a brain drain of senior doctors.

“For a country at our development level, we should be spending upwards of 7% of the gross domestic product (GDP).

“I know that the health sector had the second biggest allocation from Budget 2021.

“But in the scheme of things, if I am not mistaken, it is still only 4% of the GDP,” she said.

Adeeba said more investment is needed and it needs to be made wisely.

“Invest not in building bigger, shinier hospitals with bells and whistles. We need to address the urban-rural divide and the rise of the geriatric population.

“We are living longer but not necessarily better longer because of our high prevalence of diabetes, obesities, early stroke and heart diseases, which adds to the healthcare system burden,” she said.

She also suggested a better public-private partnership to avoid the loss of talented healthcare practitioners to private sectors.

“At the University of Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC), we have got a good private wing that was created to stop the brain drain by allowing people to do some private practice.

“It can be further improved but it did at a point help prevent people from resigning,” Adeeba said. – August 5, 2021.