KUALA LUMPUR: At the Sultan Idris Shah Serdang Hospital in Selangor, there are an estimated 1,000 patients waiting in line for urgent life-saving heart surgery.
Meanwhile, at the Penang General Hospital, the waiting list for the same surgery has ballooned to about 850 people, while the waiting time at the Kuching General Hospital is more than a year.
“All these patients urgently need heart surgery. Heart conditions are unpredictable, and surgery should be done as soon as possible but there is a shortage of cardiothoracic surgeons in the public hospitals,” Malaysian Association for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (MATCVS) honorary secretary Dr John Chan Kok Meng told CNA.
He added that these surgeons are overworked, having to attend to emergency cases beyond their working hours.
Currently, there are only 14 cardiothoracic surgeons serving in the seven public hospitals where heart surgery is performed in Malaysia.
Three of these hospitals – in the cities of Kota Bharu in Kelantan, Kuantan in Pahang and Kota Kinabalu in the Borneo state of Sabah – only have one surgeon each.
In Malaysia, the issue of the lack of cardiothoracic surgeons has made headlines after four graduates of a “parallel pathway” training programme with the Royal College of Surgeons Edinburgh in cardiothoracic surgery filed a joint judicial review application in the Kuala Lumpur High Court.
They had contested the Malaysian Medical Council’s (MMC) decision in December last year to deny their applications for the National Specialist Register (NSR) – a database of specialist medical practitioners in the country.
The MMC – a statutory body with appointed and elected medical professionals from various sectors that oversees policy for the medical profession in the country – said it did not recognise the qualification from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, one that is recognised by Singapore and Hong Kong among others.
Healthcare experts whom CNA spoke to say that the issue skims the surface over the lack of medical specialists in the country, with some warning that the problem may get worse as Malaysia faces an ageing population.
And beyond that, they also said that the lack of specialists will also impact on the quality of care received by patients in the public healthcare system who may not have the means to seek help at private institutions.
The Academy of Medicine Malaysia (AMM) – a body that represents specialists – warned that there is an urgent need for the number of specialists in the country to be increased.
Its president Dr Rosmawati Mohamed told CNA that the population-to-specialist ratio in the country is 10,000 to four, lower than the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development’s (OECD) “ideal ratio” of 10,000 to 14.3.
The OECD provides a forum in which governments can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to common problems and aims to promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.
According to Health Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, there are 8,397 specialists currently serving at public healthcare facilities in 29 specialty areas.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has said that Malaysia needed around 18,912 and 23,979 specialists in the year 2025 and 2030, respectively.
