SIBU: The Sibu Hospital has been neglected for the past 10 to 15 years, says Sarawak DAP.
Its political education bureau director Irene Chang said the issue had been raised from time to time.
“Even during the 22 months when we were in the federal government, it had been one of our top priorities to resolve the challenges faced by our hospitals.
“The proposed solution was to decentralise the healthcare system and to allow the state health department the autonomy to address and resolve the lack of resources and manpower faced by other hospitals as well in the state,” she said in a media statement here yesterday (Mar 28).
“And as early as in December 2019, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government had agreed in principle to decentralise some federal health matters to Sarawak even though the details were yet to be finalised.”
Chang, a former Bukit Assek assemblywoman, said she and her colleague, David Wong, had put into action a plan to open the cardiac unit in Sibu Hospital, adding that they had even recruited an architect and an engineer to draw the plan for the unit. The plan was eventually submitted to the Ministry of Health (MoH).
“We were in the middle of discussion with the then Minister of Finance (Lim Guan Eng) for the financial allocation for the project when the plan fell through with the fall of the PH federal government.
“It was therefore very sad and tragic that Sarawakians continue to be deprived of quality healthcare service just because politics got in the way. The lives of people would continue to be compromised for as long as political interest is placed above the people’s interest,” she said.
For the sake of Sarawakians, she urged that the decentralisation exercise which started under the PH government be push aggressively to ensure that the people would be entitled to quality healthcare without further delay.
Chang said the recent pandemic of which Sarawak was one of the worst affected in the country, had failed to prompt the federal government to satisfactorily resolve the problems of the lack of resources and manpower in the state’s healthcare system.
She said it was unacceptable that on the issue of resources, the state healthcare system was not only lacking in the supply of the necessary equipment but had also been shackled with 76 per cent of the medical equipment which was ‘beyond economic repair’.
This is in contrast with 19.6 per cent of the MoH’s overall assets as of Dec 31, 2020 in the whole of Malaysia, she said.
“The poor state and lack of the medical equipment in Sarawak has existed since many years back, and it is sad that despite the life-threatening COVID-19 pandemic, the dismal situation has continued without any real effort to resolve the issue.
“This is not for the lack of awareness being raised. Indeed, many statements on the lack of resources and manpower in our hospitals have been made from many quarters, including my statement made in December 2020 on the failure to equip even one PET Scan in any one of hospitals in the state. All these statements have fallen on deaf ears.
“It is therefore imperative that this matter should no longer be allowed to stay locked in the Pandora’s box. Sarawakians have enough of being constantly slapped on the face, for instance when at the height of the pandemic, our hospitals were ‘gifted’ with 10 units of ventilators, eight of which were not in working and functioning order,” she said.
