GEORGE TOWN: The Health Ministry is taking several steps, including restructuring positions of medical officers and conducting a study on the maldistribution of doctors to tackle the lack of specialists in the country’s health facilities.
Its deputy minister, Datuk Lukanisman Awang Sauni added that the approval by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim to add 800 specialists annually since 2023 could address the need for medical specialists.
“At the same time, we have also amended the Medicines Act 1971 by creating a parallel pathway programme to create more specialists through this alternative route.
“Currently, we have around 692 specialists using the parallel pathway and also 6,211 medical officers undergoing specialist training,” he told reporters after attending the officiation of the Miracle Baby Programme (Second Mission), a partnership between the Penang Hospital, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) and Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospital, India, at the Penang Hospital here today, which was launched by Raja Permaisuri of Perak, Tuanku Zara Salim.
He was addressing news reports claiming that the yearly decline in registered doctors and trainee doctors – 5,607 in 2021, 4,749 (2022) and 4,316 (2023) according to the Malaysian Medical Council, along with the trend of trainee doctor resignations had contributed to the lack of specialists at government hospitals and clinics.
Lukanisman also said the MOH was discussing about requests by Sabah and Sarawak for a method on bringing specialists from Peninsular Malaysia by offering small incentives.
He noted that the lack of specialists was a continuous issue as there were many fields that lacked specialists, and as such, the ministry was implementing specialist training, with 1,650 slots to train specialists that will be offered through the federal training programme.
“The MOH is currently fine-tuning ‘future-ready’ policies where we will use private sector expertise for certain services based on our experience during the Covid-19 (pandemic) where we outsourced to private hospitals,” he said, as he stressed that Malaysia had sufficient capability and supply as well as public-private sector synergy to offer specialist services.
