Malaysia’s dire need to build new hospitals was highlighted by the recent fire at Sultanah Aminah Hospital in Johor Bahru with the tragic loss of six lives. This was followed by a fire in Hospital Raja Permaisuri Bainun in Ipoh. Even the Sultan of Johor, Sultan Ibrahim Sultan Iskandar has stated that Sultanah Aminah Hospital is not a sardine factory and wants the government to build a new public hospital hospital that is better equipped at providing impeccable service to the public.
Sadly, and incredibly shockingly, the government is running out of funds to build new hospitals. The allocation for new hospitals in 2017 is only RM177,200,000; down from RM273,059,500 in 2016 (page 488, Butiran Projek 00400 Hospital Baru). It is a massive 35% cut of RM95,859,500.
Comparatively, the expenditure on building new hospitals in 2003 was RM1,704,664,978, the year Tun Dr. Mahathir retired. It was the peak of government expenditure in building new hospitals. Prime Minister Najib has slashed the amount by a massive 90%.
Over the same period of time, the Ministry of Health budget had gone up by 328% from RM7,556,006,400 in 2003 to RM24,800,986,200 in 2017. However, the allocation for new hospitals is down to a negligible 0.71% of the total budget for the Ministry of Health.
When Tun Dr. Mahathir was in office, it was the golden era of new hospitals. IJN started its services in 1992. Consequently, Hospital Selayang (1999), Hospital Putrajaya (2000), Hospital Serdang (2006), Hospital Ampang (2006) and Hospital Sungai Buloh (2006) all became operational. Hospital Shah Alam was started in 2007 but only completed by October 2015.
Even then, Malaysia is still very short of hospital beds with 1.9 beds per 1000 population (ranked 119 amongst 190 countries). The ratio for Singapore is 2.9 (ranked 94), United Kingdom 4.2 (61), Indonesia 6 (36), Germany 8.9 (8) and Japan 14.3 beds/1000 population (4). The ratio is 6.13 for High Income OECD nations. We need to build another 25 hospitals the size of the 1,200 bedded Sultanah Aminah Hospital just to be on par with Singapore. We literally need another 100 new hospitals to be on par with the high income nations in terms of beds/1000 population.
The government cannot claim to be short of funds. The funds required to build new hospitals is a small sum compared to the RM55 billion to be spent on the 600km East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) which equals RM91.7 million per km of track built. The allocation by Prime Minister Najib for new hospitals next year is not enough to build even 2km of the ECRL.
I want to ask Prime Minister Najib, why is he building ridiculously the expensive ECRL, but not building life-saving hospitals? Is it more important to transport people than healing people? Our hospitals throughout the country are forever over-crowded and falling apart with safety hazards increasing. The daily queues and the waitings in the government hospitals are far longer and worse than the traffic on the roads to the east coast. We must remember the civil servants, including teachers, the police, the armed forces and pensioners who are all dependent on the government hospitals to care for them and their families.
Obviously Prime Minister Najib doesn’t care if the poor patients have enough hospital beds. He has lost touch with the people and got his priorities wrong. If Pakatan Harapan forms the government after GE 14, I suggest we cancel the ECRL project and build 25 new hospitals the size of Sultanah Aminah Hospital to care for all the people instead. RM 2 billion a year for 10 years will give us 30,000 new hospital beds.