Kota Kinabalu: The Health Ministry aims to provide 3005 medical officers, including more specialists, to overcome the shortage of doctors in Sabah in the coming years.Its Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said it has been sending 800 medical officers a year for specialist training, double that of previous years.
"Before 2008, we sent 400 medical officers for specialist training but due to the perennial shortage of doctors and specialists in Sabah and in the country, we are now sending 800 of them per year as we are emphasising on specialist training.
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"In Sabah, there are 207 specialists and 2005 nationwide.
And still we are very short of them. We took another initiative by offering scholarships for the medical officers to pursue their medical studies to be specialists after they completed two years of housemanship," he said.
He said the Ministry has also limited the hours for doing housemanship from 90 hours to 54 hours per week so they have flexible hours to get maximum exposure in specialising fields.
The training for the housemanship has also been extended from one year to two years for each doctor under a specialist.
To a question, Liow denied that critical allowances of doctors while doing their housemanship has been cut off.
"It is not trueÉthe critical allowance will be continued.
Those irresponsible quarters are manipulating the issue and have purposely spread rumours to mislead the people although the number of hours for the housemanship has been reduced to 54 per week.
"I am very concerned with the welfare of the housemans, including their training exposure, and will make sure they get adequate training and better welfare," he said.
On maintaining old medical equipment, Liow said the Ministry has directed a maintenance company to service and maintain any medical equipment in Sabah.
He said hospitals in the State are unique because there are not many private hospitals or medical centres which the hospitals can outsource for other medical services like CT Scan and MRI.
In the peninsula, government hospitals can outsource other medical services in many existing private hospitals.
"There are old equipment in the government hospitals in the country and we are in the process of upgrading them. We would look into the equipment and renewal of the old ones to ensure medical services could be delivered to the people," he said.
In another development, Liow has assured that those outstanding elective surgeries in QEH 1 during demolition of the building will be scheduled to undergo the surgeries in QEH 2 that has 12 operating theatres.
"We have a lot of elective surgeries in QEH 1 which are not very serious and we are going to call those patients to come forward to undergo the surgeries in QEH 2 before end of this month.
"We will still give priority for heart patients to undergo surgeries and later will be the elective patients," he said.
