WHILE news that more than 10,600 new permanent posts have been approved for the Health Ministry brings cheer to Malaysians seeking treatment at government hospitals and clinics, we must ask ourselves what could we all do as responsible citizens to curb our “exploding” healthcare costs.
The Public Service Department (PSD) as the custodian of our massive civil service just announced the creation of these additional jobs for doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and medical assistants.
Most of these vacancies are at new healthcare facilities that opened this year or will start operating next year.
While bosses at the Health Ministry could pat themselves on the back for successfully securing these extra jobs and bringing smiles to job-seekers, we could well understand the headache generated at the Finance Ministry which has to cough up billions more to pay for this.
This latest green light by the PSD for beefing up manpower of the civil service, which some people describe as bloated, however, comes with a call from its director-general Datuk Mohd Khairul Adib Abd Rahman for all ministries to be creative and innovative instead of just increasing the number of staff.
While there is always an increased demand for public services due to population growth, and in the case of healthcare service more and more people becoming unhealthy, there is also a need for services of civil servants to be optimised.
The easy way out is to go to the PSD and ask for more posts to be created but with creativity and innovation, perhaps one way to curb the ballooning cost of the civil service is by multi-tasking.
Last year, for the first time in history, the government decided on a policy to control the size of the public sector by targeting to cut the 1.7 million civil service jobs by 5% beginning this year until 2021.
How this will be done will be interesting to watch because unlike in the private sector where downsizing or retrenchments are common, it’s unprecedented in the public service.
Even Health Minister Daruk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad has warned that public sector healthcare costs could rise exponentially to as high as RM80 billion annually if the rate of Malaysians falling sick continues unchecked.
Like I mentioned in an earlier column, this figure is alarming to say the least and could well become unsustainable before too long as by and large Malaysians are unhealthy.
Most Malaysians are poor guardians of personal health and what is urgently needed are structured and effective plans to reverse this potential financial time bomb and prevent it from exploding.
The Health Ministry’s planning and focus all this while has been to build more expensive hospitals and related facilities to cater for the needs of a growing population.
This has led to the nation having some 145 government hospitals and thousands of outpatient clinics in every nook and corner, even in remot villages.
While this is excellent from the curative point of view and earns Malaysia the envy of even developed nations, efforts to educate the people to stay healthy right to their old age are now even more crucial than ever.
In theory, if say RM100 million or even less is set aside for full-fledged healthy lifestyle campaigns via extensive use of the media, including social media, we could perhaps save a few billion in healthcare cost at the end of the day.
If all stakeholders put more creative effort into prevention, we could expect the huge amount spent on treatment or the curative budget to be more sustainable or manageable in the long run because prevention is always better than cure.
Should we call the services provided healthcare or sickcare?
Anyone who has been to government hospitals and clinics can see how the staff are over-worked.
Some of the bigger hospitals have as many as 10,000 staff and budgets that are even bigger than some states in the country. Phew!
There are long queues daily of people seeking treatment at these facilities which we all take for granted without giving a thought to the massive workload of the staff.
These Health Ministry employees are truly our unsung heroes working behind the scenes while hospitals are virtually the only facility that provide services round the clock.
It is imperative for us to maintain a healthy lifestyle especially in eating right to help curb the rising costs of heathcare.
And easing the tremendous pressure upon the PSD to keep creating thousands of new posts.
Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
