KOTA BARU – The Kelantan State Health Department has detected a significant increase in patient admission to medical and pediatric wards in all state hospitals, especially specialist hospitals, since early July.
State health director, Datuk Dr Zaini Hussin said bed usage in the hospital wards has also exceeded the capacity and patients’ waiting time for admission has increased to four hours.
“The department has taken several measures to address the problem, including optimising the use of hospital beds through centralised bed coordination and zoning system to reduce congestion and patient admissions.
“The department had also turned wards in district hospitals that have a low number of patients to multidisciplinary wards to accommodate increasing number of patients,” he said in a statement today.
Elaborating, Dr Zaini said other measures being taken were increasing the number of beds in district hospitals and mobilising staff to operate new additional wards.
“The department has proposed the reopening of Kuala Krai Hospital to overcome the current hospital congestion,” he said while hoping that the measures taken would help improve patient care services.
Earlier, in a Facebook post, an individual known as Mariah Fauzi shared that almost all pediatric wards around Kota Baru are currently reported to be full and there are no beds left for new patients. – Bernama, July 21, 2022