Gerawat agrees on rural doctor rotation, calls for facilities upgrade

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Dato Gerawat Gala

MIRI (June 30): Dato Gerawat Gala supports the Malaysian Medical Association’s (MMA) proposal to rotate doctors posted to rural clinics in Sarawak for better health care.

The Deputy Minister in Sarawak Premier Department (Labour, Immigration and Project Monitoring) said this move will help redress the doctor shortage issue and prompt the Ministry of Health (MOH) to upgrade facilities in rural clinics.

“The presence of doctors in rural clinics can reduce the number of emergency medical evacuations of patients to the nearest hospital in Long Lama and Marudi by logging roads.

“MOH will have to improve facilities in rural clinics to accommodate doctors and additional staff to serve the rural people,” he said.

Gerawat, who is also Mulu assemblyman, said doctors posted to rural clinics could benefit from the exposure, which might not be available in a fully fledged hospital setting.

“This will close the gap of doctors-patients ratio in Sarawak so that the rural people could have comparable standard of medical care as their urban counterparts.

Doctors must be prepared to serve in rural areas of Sabah and Sarawak, said Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) president Dr Koh Kar Chai yesterday in an interview with Free Malaysia Today.

He suggested that rotation of doctors who have served in Sabah and Sarawak for a certain period of time needed not wait for replacements before they were allowed to be posted back to the peninsula.