Kuching MP welcomes amendments to Medical Act 1971, calls for further reforms

Dr Kelvin Yii

by Dayak Daily Team

KUCHING, July 16: Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii welcomes the amendments to Act 50 or the Medical Act 1971 in the Dewan Rakyat today.

In a statement, Dr Yii stated that the Act is a crucial step in resolving the ongoing parallel pathway issue and addressing the critical shortage of medical specialists in Malaysia by enabling both parallel pathways and their master programs to run concurrently, addressing the gap between these two routes to specialisation.

“I fully welcome such amendments as it is important to give room for the medical professional’s fraternity and specialist societies who know and understand the needs and quality needed on the ground to decide the capacity and competency of that specialist in training in partnership with recognised and prestigious overseas medical establishments,” he highlighted.

He opined that for the Act to achieve its aim and to strengthen the country’s healthcare system without unintended consequences that may jeopardise the quality of care, proper implementation, transparent oversight, and a check and balance mechanism are also needed.

“While these amendments we see today did improve the composition of MMC itself, including adding more representation for Sabah and Sarawak, there is also a need for reforms to increase transparency in the MMC decision-making process.”

He hoped this would include greater transparency in publicly publishing decisions made by the Medical Education Committee (MEC), including justifications and a clear chronology of events in recognising or derecognising a medical qualification, be it undergraduate or postgraduate.

Dr Yii also pointed out the need to reform the election process of the MMC and its voting system, which still uses postal ballots. He stated that this system is outdated and should be simplified through digitalisation, in line with the Ministry of Health’s (MoH’s) digital health transformation agenda.

He explained that currently, the inconvenience of casting a ballot has discouraged the fraternity from voting, as there are only 10 per cent voting from the close to 70,000 registered medical practitioners each time there are elections.

Dr Yii further urged that voting results and votes for each candidate should be transparently published.

“More importantly, we must increase the composition of the MMC council to consist of at least 80 per cent elected representatives. Currently, out of the 33 MMC members, only 17 or just over half are elected, with the remaining 16 being appointed positions,” he further opined.

Dr Yii also suggested that there be representation from the Academy of Medicine Malaysia (AMM) in MMC itself to represent the voice and act as an oversight by the medical societies on the board. — DayakDaily