KUCHING: There is a need to increase allocation for the health system of the country, says Senator Robert Lau Hui Yew.
He said the Covid-19 pandemic had a huge impact on society and the health sector had to shoulder such a huge burden.
“We need to train and retrain our best healthcare staff. We need to invest in new facilities,” he said when debating the motion of thanks on the royal address by Yang Di-Pertuan Agong at the Dewan Negara on Monday (Sept 7).
He said under this sector, towns and villages in Sarawak and Sabah desperately needed better health facilities.
There are significant differences in terms of investment and facilities in the Peninsular compared to Sarawak and Sabah.
“Recently, there are 102 permanent medical officer positions available in Sarawak hospitals. However, less than 10 per cent of these positions have been offered to Sarawak medical officers.
“A total of 30 medical officers from Peninsular who were offered permanent positions rejected the offer. However, these positions were not offered to Sarawak medical officers. Instead they were later offered to other medical officers from Peninsular.”
He then said there were 39 per cent of health clinics without medical officers — all these clinics were located in the interior.
“A total of 152 out of 216 clinics (70.7 per cent) are not equipped with laboratories and 192 out of 216 community clinics (90 per cent) did not offer x-ray services.
“Of the entire population of doctors in Malaysia, only seven per cent serve in Sarawak.”
He said of the entire population of doctors serving in the public sector, only 8.4 per cent served in Sarawak, while only 3.4 per cent served in the private sector in the state.
Lau said at the same time, only 6.5 per cent of the medical specialist population served in Sarawak.
“Overall, the ‘doctor: population’ ration in Sarawak is 1: 892 with Kuching at 1:604, Kapit at 1:1,721, Mukah at 1:2,038 whereas in Klang Valley, the ratio is 1:150.”
He said for public health, the critical position and filling of specialists was the Family Medicine Specialists (FMS).
“This situation occurs because most FMS are from the Peninsular, and fewer local FMS. Betong and Mukah do not have any FMS.”
He also said for the medical division, critical areas of expertise were dermatology, urology, cardiothoracic, neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons and forensics.
“I think it is time for the autonomy of health and education to be returned to Sarawak.”
