There has to be a transparent and comprehensive enquiry and investigation into 2 recent cases of death in Sarawak allegedly due to lack of access of healthcare services in their respective areas.
The first case involves a baby allegedly died in its mother’s arms while travelling on a bus from Julau to Kuching for treatment and the other an elderly woman from Lawas died before an ambulance that was supposed to send her to hospital could go through the gate of Sungai Tujoh Immigration, Customs, Quarantine and Security (ICQS)
It is saddening that in this day and age, we still hear of such cases where there are people especially in the rural areas are deprived of their right to quality healthcare. This is clear symptom of long-term under-investment and neglect in our healthcare services especially in rural areas.
However to properly address this issue, we need to address the different social determinants of health(SDoH) which includes addressing poverty, providing basic amenities, equitable development and many other which may not only fall under the Ministry of Health.
That is why, moving forward to resolve health inequities there has to be a comprehensive Federal-State inter-ministry and inter-agency framework to come up with a holistic blueprint to properly address all the different social determinants of health so no one is left behind.
I hope the new Health Minister & Deputy Minister will spearhead this inter-governmental agencies to first and foremost identify issues and then allocate the necessary resources to better equip the healthcare fascilities in rural areas, and also ensure development in surrounding ecosytem.
Then it is important to firstly give all the necessary support to existing healthcare staff in the area, and then ensuring that these fascilities have the necessary specialist and man-power and even basic amenities and development so even in case of emergency, patient-transfer can be done in most efficient manner without uneccesary hurdles.
All this requires political will and more importantly for ministries not to work in silos anymore.
We may need to “re-think” how we do healthcare especially in rural areas as we want to ensure that all Malaysians will get access to quality universal healthcare and such incidents do not happen again.
No babies in a country with supposed universal healthcare coverage should die in mother’s arms on the way to the hospital.