KUALA LUMPUR: The move to approve thousands of additional permanent positions and recruit more healthcare personnel is a step in the right direction, but the government must do a lot more to strengthen its public healthcare system, say health experts.
They said addressing specialist shortages, underfunding, staff burnout and the growing demands of an ageing population would be just as critical to ensuring quality healthcare services in the years ahead.
This follows the Public Service Department (PSD) approval of the 66,312 new non-trade-off posts for the Health Ministry, involving a financial allocation of RM6.7bil to strengthen the public healthcare system.
Public healthcare specialist Prof Dr Sharifa Ezat Wan Puteh of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia said the additional positions approved by the PSD were a timely move, but manpower planning should go beyond doctors and specialists.
She said it must take into account nurses, state-level disparities, patient demand and available healthcare assets.
Citing staff burnout and poor morale as major concerns, she said increasing headcount alone would not resolve the challenges facing the public healthcare system.
“Staff feel they are burdened with high patient turnout, low pay and poor working conditions. This move by PSD is timely, hopefully to address this issue.”
Last week, the PSD said it had approved the creation of 53,516 new non-trade-off posts to support the operation of new healthcare facilities, upgrade projects for existing facilities and enhance the delivery of healthcare services to the public, with a financial implication of RM4.5bil.
The government has also approved the creation of 12,796 permanent posts for three key schemes – medical officers, dental officers and pharmacists – from 2022 until June 30 this year, with a financial allocation of RM2.2bil.
Dr Sharifa Ezat, when contacted, said Malaysia is in a critical situation where public healthcare remained under-resourced in terms of human resources, infrastructure and medicines, while health expenditure remained below 5% of GDP.
With the country’s ageing population and rising burden of non-communicable diseases, she said healthcare demand would continue to grow and require sustained investment.
She said the government should allocate a larger share of healthcare spending to primary care and public health, saying prevention, early screening and timely treatment were key to reducing pressure on hospitals.
“Besides allocating a higher percentage of GDP to healthcare, the government must also increase spending on primary care and public health.
“Without strengthening these two areas, many diseases will progress, leading to more complications,” she said.
Public health medicine specialist Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar described the latest recruitment exercise as a timely development for workforce stability, but this remained insufficient to address the scale of manpower shortages.
“The new positions are essentially a retention move, but they don’t solve the root cause.”
Between 2019 and 2023, he said 6,417 medical officers and 1,046 specialists left government service, equivalent to around three doctors leaving the public sector every day.
“The most critical gap is the acute shortage of specialists. Patients face long waits and delayed care, and the exodus of senior specialists threatens the training of future doctors.”
He warned that Malaysia was not sufficiently prepared for the combined impact of population ageing and the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases.
As such, he said reforms, including better specialist retention and expanded training pathways, must be prioritised by the government.
