Dear Health Minister, you have an Open Letter
posted in - Featured site, - Nation, - Palmdoc |POTS has written an Open Letter to the Health Minister which deals with the plight of Sabahans after the partial closure of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the only General Hospital in KK, when it was declared an Unsafe Hospital apparently due to appalling construction standards and poor maintenance. Shortly thereafter, the Health Minister gave his assurances on “Quality health services” (then again he did not exactly say good or bad quality).
POTS tells of how the closure of key areas like CT scanners and OT and having to outsource these to private hospitals has resulted in a situation where patient care is far from one which could be describes as a “good quality health service”.
It is already six months since the initial and abrupt closure of Kota Kinabalu’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Since then, we have been without a proper operating theatre and intensive care unit. We are also without distinctive wards for many of our surgical patients of most disciplines.
Frankly speaking, the health crisis of the state of Sabah has run so deep and far along that I do not where to begin.
POTS likens the situation to that of being a “squatter”.
For six months, the medical staff and patients of Sabah have been housed in sections of the Sabah Medical Center paying a whooping rental of RM 90,000 per day.
For five months since our forced relocation into your prized SMC, we only had one operating room for life-threatening emergency cases. Elective surgeries were postponed indefinitely even those involving cancers and prostates and suspicious breast lumps.
We only restarted elective surgeries a month ago but even so, the backlog of cases is tremendous and catastrophic.
I wonder Mr Minister, how would you like to have a tumor growing in your rectum with no avenue of getting it removed?
That is exactly what our poor Sabah folks were facing. They were without money and without a hospital to get operated in. In fact, they still don’t because they do not have a formal general hospital for Kota Kinabalu anymore.
Heck, we don’t even have our own CT scan.
What we do have however is lots of bills to pay and debts to settle.
Is it true that the state department of health owes SMC a total of RM 6.1 million for CT scan services? Is it true that Hantaran Wira, the company contracted to provide transport to and fro SMC-QEH is paid RM 0.5 million per month?
It seems nowadays whenever politicians make press statements, we the public will read these statements with a triple pinch of salt. We see too many statements which don’t tell the truth and which only portray a twisted picture of what is really happening. I feel very sad that the country is literally going to the dogs for want of leaders who are principled, honest, trustworthy and know the meaning of integrity. When we see blatant bribery, corruption, cheating, injustice and unfair practices by those whose sole aim is to gain or cling on to power, what hope is there?
We on the ground can only do the work the best we can, even though we are handicapped by limited resources, resources which have been squandered by leakages, corruption and poor quality administration. We can only pray for change. But what hope do we have for change when there’s no Obama in sight for Malaysia?
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