Letters
by ABJ

Here we go again. DG Merican laments yet again that the source of Malaysia’s entire healthcare problems lie with private clinics and hospitals as reported by Annie Freeda Cruez, the New Straits Times’ healthcare correspondent “extraordinaire”.

Incredible as it may seem, DG Merican with all the healthcare resources of the Malaysian government at his beck and call, has chosen to blame, yet again, private clinics and hospitals as the main cause for the rising death toll of dengue in Malaysia. Why are we not surprised? What next? Blame the H1N1 on airlines or the virus itself?

Merican appears to have forgotten, that the government’s own understaffed, overcrowded health and rural clinics conveniently close their doors at 4.30pm on the dot driving the hapless population to private clinics, if there is still one that has not closed, in that locality.

And if there is one in a rural setting that actually opens for 24 hours patients come in late as a result of costs. Patients who come late with all their attendant symptoms get referred to a government hospital quickly.

But Merican of all people should know that getting them to a government hospital that has the resources of a functioning 24-hour laboratory or platelets with a proper ambulance service and an ICU bed on standby is easier said then done.

Please come to Kota Kinabalu and we will take you through the mayhem some people term “makeshift government services” here. In fact no need to blame private clinics here because they have indeed become part and parcel of government service.

DG Merican needs to wake-up, stop his lowly politicking and move away from the blame culture so deeply embedded in his DNA. Dengue, like almost any other vector borne disease, is all about prevention, not treatment. Merican’s very statement gives him away for the incompetent fool that he is threatening to become. Any other country would have given him the sack instantly. But sigh, we are in Malaysia and so we must tolerate and unfortunately respect his idiosyncrasies too.

Merican. Where are all your health staff? Yes, all those makciks and kakaks who want a cushy 9 to 5 job and refuse to go to the kampongs, shoplots, factories, schools and housing estates to campaign, educate and enforce so that all breeding grounds for this deadly disease are eradicated, assuming of course you have moved away from the “blame the public” doctrine.

Or are they not there at all because, you have channeled all of them and the money the wrong direction into some useless program like halal vaccine or something like that. Is the whole southern region still sharing one useless fogging machine to kill these mosquitoes? And do you still not know that fogging is actually almost useless in today’s battle against dengue.

Private clinics and hospitals have always been the favorite bogeymen for anything and everything that goes wrong in the Ministry of Health ever since the Merican and Chua Soi Lek show began in 2004.

Even Parliament was scammed by these two clowns when MPs were misled into believing that private clinics and hospitals were the source of all Malaysia’s healthcare problems resulting in the passage of yet another new Act.

Perhaps, Merican should use the services of the almost 50 doctors doing their fault finding and blackmailing rounds of private clinics and deploy them instead to fight the mortal dengue menace.

Perhaps Malaysians should engage in a bit of fault finding themselves and ask how this country has descended to such horrific low standards in public healthcare. This Ministry of Hell, long run by a politically lost party which doesn’t have the confidence of the public compounded further now by an incompetent DG is being hit by one health disaster after another repeatedly.

There is a pattern here. And that pattern is – everytime a major health issue arises, please go raid a clinic or pharmacy and take the attention off the issue. It’s only a matter of time before H1N1, malaria, TB, yellow fever, cancer, diabetes, hypertension and ISS (Intellectual Stupidity Syndrome) is also blamed upon on private clinics.

It’s been 5 years running that DG Merican has fooled the public and the government including the cabinet that all is well at this disastrous Ministry tarnishing the government’s credibility in the process. Isn’t it time Najib or whoever is responsible in running this government put an end to this DG’s charade?