No job security for contract doctors

FIFTEEN thousand contract doctors are in a bind. Despite providing an essential healthcare service, they are facing an uncertain future.

These medical graduates have been employed by the government on a contract basis since December 2016 with no security of tenure.

Many of them have young families to support.

Health Minister Dr Adham Baba has been quoted in the media as saying that permanent posts could only be offered to contract doctors based on vacancies, and that any arbitrary additions to existing positions will be queried by government auditors.

Surely there is a way around this minor hurdle. Just increase the number of vacancies, by legislation if necessary, and thus cut the Gordian knot.

That is a simple, workable, desirable and necessary step to do what is right, and what must be done to resolve this issue.

For how long can these doctors be kept in limbo?

The doctors and housemen have launched Code Black as a means of highlighting their long-standing issue. But they say that whatever move they make in furtherance of their initiative will not affect patient care.

This speaks volumes of their dedication and sense of responsibility and is a reflection of their adherence to the Hippocratic Oath.

It is not right to use them and then leave them.

Their uncertainty of employment is also hampering their efforts at specialisation, and this will, in the long run, have an adverse effect on the supply of specialist doctors in government hospitals.

Doctors are not in the same category as graduates in other disciplines who have the opportunity to seek employment in many sectors.

New doctors and housemen are trained only to work with patients in the limited number of hospitals.It is difficult to understand why, despite the several meetings that the Malaysian Medical Association has had with the authorities, no solution has been found.

If there is a will, there is a way, in as much as every disease has a cure.

TAN SRI LEE LAM THYE

Kuala Lumpur