The Penang Institute has urged the health ministry to channel funds into developing public hospitals instead of implementing the healthcare scheme for low-income earners pledged in the Pakatan Harapan (PH) election manifesto.
Lim Chee Han, a senior analyst at the think tank, acknowledged that the Skim Peduli Sihat (SPS) would alleviate the burden of the bottom 40 (B40) group but warned that it lacked elements of sustainability.
Under PH’s 100-day manifesto, the SPS is scheduled to be launched nationwide in January 2019. Speaking to FMT, Lim suggested that the government use the funds to enhance public healthcare and facilities instead of spending some RM1.4 billion on the SPS programme.
“It is better if the government uses a large chunk of the budget (and channels it) into its development expenditure to build up the capacity of health ministry hospitals,” he said, adding that the public healthcare sector was both underfunded and under-resourced. If the health ministry doesn’t start giving more attention to the public healthcare sector, especially public hospitals, things could get dangerous just like the two hospital fires which happened in the last two years. This would not instil public confidence.”
Lim was referring to the fire in March which destroyed a portion of the Kuala Lumpur Hospital’s forensics department. It was caused by a short circuit at its store. In the other incident, a sealer machine caught fire at the packing room of an operation theatre at Sultanah Aminah Hospital (HSA) in September 2017.
Another fire which broke out at the intensive care unit of the HSA in 2016 killed six patients. According to news reports, that fire was caused by a faulty capacitor in one of the ceiling lights.
Lim said first and foremost, the government must ensure enough investments for the development and upgrading of public healthcare services.
“Although the SPS programme is stated as one of the promises in PH’s general election manifesto, the original Selangor state government’s model it proposed is a more populist and less beneficial model,” he said.
He suggested that more thorough cost-benefit studies on the current “takaful” model of the SPS programme be carried out, with public consultations with larger groups of stakeholders. He said the health ministry needed to understand both the positive as well as the negative impact of the programme on the country’s public health sector, especially for the retainment of specialists and allied health practitioners.
“We applaud the health ministry for emphasising primary care and preventive healthcare. As such, the government should spend more to strengthen healthcare services at the community level. The much-discussed community care based on the family doctor concept should be implemented and the government should address the rise in non-communicable diseases in the country.”
In July, the health ministry set up a task force to work on the implementation of the SPS. Its minister Dzulkefly Ahmad reportedly said the SPS programme would benefit some 2.6 million lower-income families or 10.4 million people nationwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment