When tabling Budget 2017, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced a RM30 million allocation for free mammogram screening and HPV vaccination for Malaysian women. It is merely a few months down the road but the alarm bells are ringing louder than ever, this time over the halting of free mammogram screening at private healthcare providers due to no allocation!
Free mammogram screening was launched in 2007, private medical institutions have been providing free breast examinations in the form of mammogram to women above the age of 40. However, due to lack of allocation received, the programme has halted in August 2016.
Breast cancer is the number 1 killer among Malaysian women with cancer, and 1 in 19 Malaysian women has breast cancer. According to research, patients whose breast cancer was detected early received the better prognosis. And the most effective way to detect breast cancer early is for women to have a mammogram screening every 2 years and every 6 months for the high-risk category.
Today, the Ministry of Health is reviewing the charge imposed on cancer patients in government hospitals. According to the Deputy Director-General of Health Datuk Dr S. Jeyaindran, patients will be charged 20% of the actual cost for treatment, as opposed to the fully subsidized policy now. The entire treatment for breast cancer can go as high as RM 395,000! If public hospitals were to charge patients ‘only’ 20% of the actual cost of treatment, the patients will still have to fork out a whooping RM80,000! Imagine the heavy weight of financial burden on the shoulders of the patients.
A report by the George Institute for Global Health reveals 39% of Malaysians are unable to afford the expensive cost of treatment for cancer, with 19% of all patients discontinuing treatment altogether! As the cost of treatment increases, there are bound to be more patients giving up the option of seeking treatment because they are unable to afford it.
The move to offer free mammogram services was rightly lauded at its inception in 2007; the investment of RM30 million in 2017 into early detection of breast cancer is likely to save the nation millions more in terms of subsidy for medical treatments following detection of breast cancer at a more advanced stage. RM30 million is a mere 0.01% of the total Budget 2017 allocation. If the Barisan Nasional government is unable to come up with this amount, I would like to know where has the RM 39 billion from the collection of the GST in 2016 gone to?