Malaysia’s drive to fully-developed status by 2020 and its young but ageing population pose a dual challenge: How does one provide the world-quality health care that the rakyat not only needs, but demands?
The rewards are greater than would appear at first thought. Not only improving the quality of life and increasing the productivity of workers, but also the benefits of a growing and skilled industry and medical tourism beckon if the Government can find the solution. On a smaller scale, if done properly, carefully-delivered health care can alleviate financial and health burdens on lower-income Malaysians that they would otherwise feel keenly.
In March, The Choice reported on Pakatan Rakyat’s attempts to attack the Government approach to these concerns before the Government even had an approach. With GE13 fast approaching, it is worth asking what solutions are available and what are planned.
The Government has responded on numerous fronts. Most obviously, it has opened the 1Malaysia Clinics, a way to bring daily medical attention not only to the kampung but also to those urban dwellers for whom the difference between a payment of RM30 and RM1 a visit — the latter the price of a trip to a 1Malaysia Clinic — can be the difference between scrounging through the month and beginning a drive to household prosperity.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak launched the 1Malaysia Clinic programme with the 2010 budget. The clinics are open 12 hours a day and offer front-line treatment for smaller but still significant ailments — such as fever, high blood pressure, asthma and basic first aid. These are not intended to replace the rest of the system but rather to both provide a cheap manner for the rakyat to deal with these real problems, and to relieve other clinics of the stress of dealing with these issues so they can turn to larger health concerns.
Najib is clear that the work to date is only a start, and that the Government has more planned. The Government is also working to develop the human capital needed to grow the health care sector. The Health Ministry has placed targets to to that effect: Once the Economic Transformation Programme is complete, it is expected that there will be one doctor for every 400 citizens, an increase from the current level of approximately one for every 800, and one nurse for every two hundred citizens, up from one for just short of every 400. The Government is not only expanding the clinics for these health care facilities, but also the educational institutions for them.
Putrajaya is also keen on developing the country as a medical tourism hub, a source of economic growth that produces collateral benefits for the whole economy. Malaysia’s opportunity to offer low-cost, high-quality, high-end health care to the Asean region — already a growing industry — will encourage growth in the medical sector and in nominally unrelated sectors such as ordinary tourism, retail, and hospitality. It will also serve to showcase the country’s development and encourage foreign direct investment as the wealthy from abroad travel here and see the stability and growth of the country.
The entire world faces a series of growing health care concerns, brought on by insufficient planning, insufficient resources, escalating costs and in some places a population ageing too rapidly for its remaining work force to keep pace. It is to the Government’s credit that it moved to resolve these issues before they become problems here, and that it is not planning to rest on its achievements to date.