KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 20 – Dungun MP Wan Hassan Mohd Ramli today questioned what immediate and long-term solutions the Ministry of Health (MOH) has for the increasingly strained public health care system.
The PAS lawmaker – who was previously a member of the health, science, and innovation parliamentary special select committee in the 14th Parliament – highlighted seven pressing issues in government hospitals, particularly large hospitals in state capitals and big cities that he said are “too congested”.
“This situation is causing multiple problems that are affecting the quality of care for our patients,” Wan Hassan said in his debate on the motion of thanks on the royal address in the Dewan Rakyat.
The seven main problems in large public hospitals, he listed, are:
- Excessively long registration times.
- Long waiting times for medical treatment.
- Long waiting times for ward admission due to the lack of empty beds.
- Early patient discharge before true recovery to make way for new cases awaiting treatment.
- Increased risk of infection from other patients.
- Patient load exceeds ward capacity, creating stressful working conditions for doctors and nurses.
- Mental stress faced by staff working in full and congested wards.
“Therefore, my question is, what are MOH’s long-term as well as short-term and immediate initiatives to resolve all these problems?” Wan Hassan said.
The Terengganu MP also questioned the progress of the long-promised Dungun Hospital in his constituency, pointing out that a parliamentary reply he received on November 18, 2021, said that the facility was 98.2 per cent complete.
“Operations were projected for April 2022. But today is already February 20, 2023, and it’s still not operational. What’s the real issue that is hindering the solution for the people of Dungun district?”
CodeBlue’s nationwide survey last month among more than 1,600 government health care workers across professions revealed that 95 per cent believe the public health care system is currently in crisis, with a severely understaffed health service and health care professionals complaining of being overworked and underpaid.
