Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad recently revealed that 2,293 patients are currently waiting for cardiothoracic surgery in government hospitals, with some waiting up to seven months.
For children’s heart surgeries, the situation is even more worrisome — 603 cases on the waiting list, with an average wait time of 21 months.
These are not just cold, lifeless statistics. Behind every number is a human story: 2,293 worried patients, and 603 families going through emotional turmoil.
We all know this truth: while a patient can wait, a heart condition doesn’t. This serious backlog in cardiothoracic surgery is not just an operational hiccup — it’s a sign of something deeply wrong with the structure of our national health care system.
As a cardiologist myself, I have to stress that heart and lung conditions do not improve simply by waiting. For many patients, time is literally life.
The longer the delay, the more complicated the condition becomes, and the riskier the surgery. Worse still, if treatment is delayed too long, we could completely miss the best window to save a life.
So, why are patients waiting so long?
Such large-scale, systemic surgical delays are not isolated incidents in a few hospitals. Rather, they are a clear manifestation of structural imbalance within the national health care system which urgently needs fixing:
Not Enough Specialists: Public hospitals have been short on cardiothoracic specialists for years. Thanks to the instability of the contract system, many doctors have left for private hospitals or gone overseas.
That leaves the rest struggling to keep up with hundreds of cases. One doctor with two hands can only do so much — they simply can’t handle it all.
Unequal Access to Facilities: Heart surgery facilities are concentrated in only a few major hospitals. That means patients in East Malaysia or remote areas are at a serious disadvantage.
Some hospitals can’t even offer heart surgery, so patients have to be referred to hospitals in bigger cities, where they’re put on long waiting lists. It’s an unfair system where location decides your chances of survival.
Wrong Priorities in Health Care Planning: Yes, the government has been increasing the health care budget every year. But the focus has mainly been on constructing new or upgrading existing hospitals and buying equipment.
Meanwhile, we are not doing enough to keep specialists, strengthen training, or improve how we coordinate surgeries and resources. The system may look big, but it is not functioning the way it should — like a body with a swollen frame but a weak heart.
And what about children?
This is where the situation becomes truly heartbreaking. A 21-month wait for a child with heart disease is almost their whole early life. Many congenital heart defects need to be treated during key growth stages — missing that window could mean missing the chance to grow up healthy.
Just imagine being a parent, sitting by your child’s hospital bed every day, only to hear the doctor say, “We need to wait a bit longer.” That’s not a failure of the medical team — it is a failure of the system. And it is more brutal than the illness itself.
I hope the Ministry of Health (MOH) will undertake these five urgent measures:
Use special emergency funds to clear the surgery backlog: Just like during the pandemic, set up a “Special Cardiothoracic Surgery Fund”. Bring in private hospitals or university medical centres to help reduce the waiting list. Lives should never be held up by bureaucracy.
Launch a short-term overseas specialist programme: Bring in certified foreign cardiothoracic surgeons to work in government hospitals for two to three years. Let them collaborate with local teams to speed things up and share expertise.
Create a national scheduling and coordination system: We need a proper central platform that tracks all surgery cases and helps balance the workload across hospitals. This can stop situations where some hospitals are overloaded while others sit underutilised.
Train more cardiothoracic specialists, and do it fast: This is a demanding and often overlooked specialty. The government should offer scholarships, reduce compulsory service periods, and improve training support to attract more young doctors. If we do not act now, even our senior trainers will retire without successors.
Fix the doctor retention problem: In the long run, we must reform the contract system, improve salaries, and offer a better work environment. If we do not, the shortage of doctors will keep getting worse — not just in heart surgery, but across the entire health care system.
Prevent “waiting for treatment” become “waiting in vain”.
Malaysia must not become a country where patients cannot afford to wait, and doctors cannot afford to stay. Every delayed operation is not just another line item on the MOH’s KPIs — it’s a family’s future hanging in the balance.
We cannot keep blaming “system limitations” when lives are on the line. If reforms are slow and the response continues to lag, we won’t just lose patients — we will lose the people’s trust in public health care.
Dr Mah Hang Soon is the deputy president of MCA.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
