KUALA LUMPUR, July 4 — Malaysia needs another extra RM4 billion to help its health system cope with strained resources during the Covid-19 fight and to also enable permanent positions to be offered to healthcare workers on temporary government contracts, former finance minister Lim Guan Eng said today.
Lim, who is also DAP secretary-general and Bagan MP, highlighted the recent social media photos of the “poignant scene” of doctors at Hospital Kuala Lumpur desperately trying to perform a life-saving procedure on a patient on the floor due to the lack of hospital beds then.
He said the incident at Hospital Kuala Lumpur underlined what he described as a “losing battle” against Covid-19 and the lack of hospital beds and resources to support medical frontliners.
“An additional RM4 billion is needed not only to beef up resources, equipment, and personnel to support our health system straining to breaking point under the avalanche of Covid-19 infections and deaths,” he said in a brief statement, but did not elaborate on how he arrived at the RM4 billion figure.
Lim said the additional RM4 billion sum could also be used to offer permanent postings to the 35,216 health officers on contract with the government now, namely the 23,077 medical officers or doctors, 5,000 dental officers and 7,139 pharmacists. The 35,216 figure as of May 31 and its breakdown was publicly disclosed by the health minister on June 30.
Lim added that having a targeted movement control order (MCO) approach that relies on science and data based on the World Health Organization’s proven success of adopting mass screenings to “test, trace, isolate and treat” and a swift and smooth vaccination programme would be Malaysia’s best hope in winning the war against Covid-19.
Yesterday, Hospital Kuala Lumpur director Datuk Dr Heric Corray explained two separate incidents that had been spread on social media regarding two patients being treated on the hospital floor, including one being due to the lack of available beds then and another to prevent the patient who was having seizures from falling off the canvas bed.
Lim’s remarks regarding the permanent postings for contract healthcare workers come amid an ongoing campaign by contract doctors involved in the #HartalDoktorKontrak movement to press for a resolution to their predicament.
The #HartalDoktorKontrak movement has so far submitted a memorandum to the Health Ministry, and plans to hold a symbolic one-day strike on July 26 as a last resort if the government does not address the group’s demands and concerns.
The #HartalDoktorKontrak movement had said it has prepared a system to manage their patients during the proposed July 26 strike and would try its best not to involve doctors who are on duty in Covid-19 treatment hospitals unless proper arrangements can be made.
The Malaysian Medical Association’s (MMA) Section Concerning House Officers, Medical Officers and Specialists (Schomos) had in late June clarified on Facebook that it does not support having a strike, and that it was instead standing in solidarity through the “Code Black” campaign from July 1 to July 12 which would culminate in the “Black Monday” campaign on July 12.
Under the Code Black campaign, those supporting the campaign were asked to change their social media profile photos or company or institution logo to black or monochrome and helping to share the news about contract doctors, while the Black Monday campaign involves wearing black to work as usual and posting pictures on social media of them holding a placard saying “We stand with contract healthcare workers” with the hashtags #saveMYcontractHCW, #CodeBlackMY and #BlackMondayMY.
MMA Schomos had advised doctors against carrying out a work strike to avoid compromising patient care and instead advocated for the solidarity campaign, adding that it will seek to engage the government for urgent action to provide job security, equal and fair treatment, detailed transparent criteria for permanent posts and clear postgraduate pathway for specialisation for contract doctors.
The health minister on June 30 said he will raise issues prompting contract doctors into a possible strike in the next Cabinet meeting, where requests to make the ministry’s contract doctor scheme more beneficial are expected to be presented.
