Ismail Merican

PETALING JAYA (Oct 21, 2009) : The Ministry of Health (MOH) has recommended to the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) to reduce the compulsory service for new doctors from the present three years to two years.

This was in response to requests from parents who had sacrificed in funding the medical education of their children, said Director-General of Health, Tan Sri Dr Mohd Ismail Merican.

Writing in the special column in the Malaysian Medical Association's (MMA) latest newsletter, he said the ministry appreciated the long hours housemen and junior doctors and doctors in general have put in and the ministry "was doing everything in its power to fight for better remuneration, allowances and promotional prospects."

"Various measures have been taken and will be implemented to ensure that doctors continue to serve the MOH," he added.

Among them were creation of new allowances; improving the current critical and on-call allowances; providing RM80 per hour allowance for working extended hours; and RM200 per hour for those performing operations on off-days.

In addition MOH had also created more opportunities for doctors to get promoted to higher grades and improve working conditions and environment.

He said so far 24,135 posts have been created but as at Dec 2008 only 13,762 or 57% of the posts had been filled of which 2,545 were for specialists from various disciplines.

Dr Mohd Ismail said the ministry was also working on a time-based and flexible promotion for medical officers who were not specialists.

"It saddens me to learn that some of our non-specialist medical officers have retired on low grades even after putting in long years of valuable and loyal service."

"However, with this new initiative the days of medical officers, some of whom are 'gurkhas' in the department, being neglected or overlooked for promotion will be history," he assured.

To address the shortage of doctors in the short term , Dr Mohd Ismail said the ministry had invited those working abroad and those in the local private sector to work with the MOH.

"We have already placed advertisements and hope they will respond favourably and rise to the challenge of providing quality healthcare to Malaysians," he added.

According to Dr Mohd Ismail, last year government doctors provided services to two million admitted patients and 62 million out-patients. This year the number would increase significantly due to the economic downturn and the Influenza A H1N1 pandemic. -- BERNAMA