KUALA LUMPUR – Public healthcare is at breaking point, and needs a multi-sectoral task force comprising other ministries to develop a national healthcare strategy, a policy group said amid reports of overstretched and underpaid Health Ministry staff.
Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy chief executive Azrul Mohd Khalib said forming the task force should be a priority for the unity government in its first 100 days.
Besides developing a strategy, the task force should also understand and address the staff’s issues through long-term plans. Particularly problematic areas are recruitment and worker retention, he said in a statement.
Azrul also called for the recruitment of overseas health staff, and a strengthened allocation for health under Budget 2023 to address problems in the public healthcare workforce.
He said many recently-proposed solutions have been stop-gap measures and did not take the concerns of health frontliners seriously. The measures could not succeed because they needed sufficient staff.
Besides the shortage of healthcare professionals in the public sector resulting in overworked and underpaid staff, public hospitals have also become increasingly congested with patients, Azrul said.
“They are facing extremely difficult workplace conditions (as) described in the Auditor General’s 2018 report.
“There is excessive workload, burnout amidst widespread anxiety, trauma, and mental fatigue which are causing many staff to decide to leave, causing shortages, and increasing pressure on current employees, thus creating a vicious cycle. The emergency and trauma departments have been described as war zones even before the Covid-19 crisis.”
“The pandemic has exacerbated these long-term issues, weakened parts of our healthcare system and caused permanent damage. In some hospitals today, people are waiting between 24 hours and several days for a bed,” Azrul added.
He also noted how healthcare workers are still doing 30-hour shifts, with some resulting in accidents and loss of life due to sheer exhaustion.
He reiterated the warning made by groups such as Hartal Doktor Kontrak, that there are doctors leaving the public service to work in other countries, “or worse leaving medicine altogether”.
Azrul referenced a special report by health website CodeBlue, which found that 95% of health workers consider Malaysia’s public healthcare system to be in crisis, driving seven out of 10 frontliners to think of quitting.
CodeBlue had conducted a poll among more than 1,600 government healthcare workers and also found that more than half of them were willing to go on strike. – The Vibes, February 4, 2023
