KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 1 — Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah expressed his immense gratitude today towards the volunteers who have joined the country’s battle against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).
He said 2,359 volunteers from various areas of healthcare across the country have been working with the Ministry of Health (MOH) since the beginning of the outbreak and he is working to secure contracts for them.
“MOH are grateful for all the volunteers and medical personnel who’ve been helping us since the outbreak of Covid-19.
“At the same time we at MOH are working with the central agencies to get the contracts sorted out for those who wish to work with MOH for the duration of the outbreak of Covid-19,” said Dr Noor Hisham during his daily briefing on Covid-19 in Putrajaya today.
The volunteers include 65 medical professionals, 159 medical officers, 909 nurses, 220 lab technicians, 704 medical assistants, 106 X-ray technicians, 56 physiotherapists, 70 microbiologists, seven pharmacists, 44 assistant pharmacists, 11 safety and health officers, two psychologists and six counsellors.
“MoH encourages more volunteers who want to help to step up and join the team. If they want to join us they can fill up the relevant forms online,” he added.
Dr Noor Hisham was also asked to respond to former health minister Datuk Seri Dzulkefly Ahmad’s comments yesterday about Putrajaya’s reluctance to share information on Covid-19 with state governments.
Dzulkefly is chairman of Selangor’s special action council on Covid-19 and said his requests for Covid-19 patient data from the MoH were not met,
The Health D-G said that while they would like to share all available data freely, authorities needed to vet this to ensure that personal information unrelated to Covid-19 was not inadvertently released.
“What’s important is that we welcome all parties working with MOH, more so in a crisis that’s brought us together.
“We need to look into what aspects of the data we can share. So like public health data there’s not much of an issue but for personal data there may be an issue there,” said Dr Noor Hisham.
