KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 5 – The Health Ministry and Sunway Medical Centre today inked a five-year agreement for the private hospital to annually sponsor 10 government medical officers’ postgraduate studies.
For the 2020/2021 academic session, the scholarship programme under the memorandum of understanding will include six fields, namely radiology, pathology, neurosurgery, plastic surgery, clinical oncology and nuclear medicine.
Medical officers who accept this offer will have to serve the government for a period of four years and Sunway Medical Centre for three years.
“This partnership is very much welcomed in our efforts to produce more specialists to meet the needs of the national health care system.
“Investment in this endeavour should be seen as a joint responsibility of the government and the private sector for the greater good of the country,” Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a statement.
The latest 2020-2024 partnership between the Health Ministry and Sunway Medical Centre follows an existing 1,100 slots offered annually by the ministry for medical officers to further their postgraduate studies, in collaboration with eight public universities.
“We have also implemented the Parallel Pathway Specialisation Training Programme which is equivalent to a Master of Medicine degree at a Malaysian public university. In addition, the Subspecialist Training Programme is offered to 360 specialists each year for training in government hospitals and institutions abroad,” Dr Noor Hisham said.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston said last month at the end of a mission to Malaysia that 70 per cent of specialists were estimated to be in the more expensive private health care system, mostly concentrated in wealthier areas, that treats just 30 per cent of complicated cases.
Thomson Hospital Kota Damansara CEO Nadiah Wan said last July that medical specialists sometimes left the civil service for the private sector because of a Health Ministry ruling that requires hospitals to have full-time doctors for their services, which means that specialists can’t work part-time in the public sector.
