The core business of healthcare involve the lives of the people and it is a safety net for all who have no access to private healthcare services. Therefore, I appeal to all doctors who have taken the Hippocratic Oath to hold off the three-day planned strike.
– Senator Dr RA Lingeshwaran, former hospital director
Thank God today is not my mum’s cardiologist appointment. Her appointment with an Institut Jantung Negara doctor is only next week.
Just in case many of us are not aware: some 8,000 out of the 20,000 or so contract doctors have announced in their #Mogokdoktormalaysia Instagram page that they will go on a three-day strike nationwide by going on emergency or medical leave while some are expected to resign en masse from today until April 5 to protest against “long working hours, unfair systems and low wages”.
I am not sure whether health care workers from Sarawak will lend support to their fellow aggrieved colleagues in Malaya, but I believe they too are affected.
The contract doctors have warned patients not to visit general hospitals or government health clinics over the next three days as their waiting time will be much longer than usual.
They also posted the advice on the DoctorsMYInfo page (@doctorsmalaysia) which has more than 13,000 followers.
One member of the group reportedly told a national news portal that “between 10,000 and 13,000 health care workers” might join the three-day strike, claiming many had expressed interest, with the majority from Selangor, Penang, Johor, Sabah and Sarawak.
Hopefully, patients in Sarawak are prepared. Expect private hospitals and clinics to be crowded in the next three days.
For a noble profession – that is supposed to hold fast to the ancient Hippocratic Oath and which provides critical services involving human lives and people’s wellbeing – to resort to a strike could mean the patience of these medical officers must have run thin; they have waited, not just one or two years, but several years for the government to resolve their woes.
This is not the first time that they are resorting to such a drastic action; government doctors also held a strike by staging demonstrations nationwide on July 26 2021. Only this time they have decided to protest by taking emergency or medical leave as the alternative choice.
Being civil servants, they must have known that they are forbidden from joining demonstrations or illegal gatherings as per a Public Service Department circular dated June 30, 2011 – Regulation 4(1) and 4(2), PU(A) 395/1993, which among others bars ‘active involvement’ outside of working hours, using office hours, and leaving the office to observe and join gatherings.
The plight of government medical officers didn’t pop up just recently. It’s a longstanding issue which Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s government inherited from the previous administrations since the eighties era.
Only this time the issue, including the plight of contract doctors, has exacerbated and Prime Minister Anwar might have to pop a higher dosage of paracetamol to head off his headache.
Anwar recently said he needs three years to resolve the problems of the contract doctors, arguing that his government can’t be expected to resolve the issue immediately.
“I give my assurance that this year there will be 1,500 permanent placements. Next year and the following year, let’s say in three years’ time, we can solve this problem,” he said.
The Health Ministry (MoH), realising that a strike will only further aggravate the issue, yesterday announced a high-level panel to look into the contract doctors’ grievances to defuse the situation.
But the aggrieved contract doctors would have none of it, adamant that the planned strike will proceed and that there will be no negotiation. “We have lost our confidence in MoH. Multiple committees were formed before too, but nothing much has changed. We have been disappointed again and again.”
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah also joined in the chorus of attempting to talk the doctors out of their planned strike, saying they should remain resilient because the challenges ahead, including the “risk of a crisis or a pandemic, may be greater and more complex than what we have experienced before”.
Dr Noor, being a medical doctor himself, understands the plight of the government doctors: “Health care workers, who are the main assets of the public health care sector, must continue to be given appropriate attention, including fair wages for their services.”
One doctor told CodeBlue, a health news website, recently: “I think doctors are fed up with listening to ‘kita akan buat sesuatu’ (we will do something). With more and more people voicing out now, we have finally realised that it is a dead end.”
The website reported that healthcare workers who participated in a recent two-week survey for the public health service last month felt that the MoH was “not serious in resolving issues with staff shortages, unfair wages, poor facilities, and toxic work conditions that have persisted for more than a decade”.
What are the demands of the contract doctors?
According to #Mogokdoktormalaysia, contract medical officers want to be placed in permanent positions without any condition or having to go through interviews. They also want an increase in the basic salary and on-call rate for medical specialists and officers, and reduced working hours for medical officers and graduate medical officers.
The doctors also seek better remuneration, claiming the current rate of RM9.16 per hour for a 24-hour weekend on-call shift is too low.
They are claiming they are being overworked, and healthcare facilities are overcrowded and face shortage of manpower.
According to CodeBlue, the doctors want a review of salaries for all healthcare personnel as the annual medical inflation rate is about 8 to 10 per cent.
And the doctors want “discrimination of and threats” to health care staff stopped. “We are not allowed to speak. If we did, we would be threatened … this information may be denied, but many of us have got calls, messages, and personal WhatsApp messages on this.”
For details of the government doctors’ list of demands go to: https://codeblue.galencentre.org/2023/02/16/government-doctors-list-12-demands-to-avert-potential-strike/
Doctors are an integral part of society; they can mean the difference between life and death – they are responsible for our higher life expectancy and improved wellbeing. We owe our survival to them.
As Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung once said, and I quote, “Medicines cure diseases, but only doctors can cure patients.”
Hopefully, the doctors take heed of the Hippocratic Oath, primum non nocere (first, do no harm) to patients, and call off their planned strike today.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
