Digest on Malaysian News

My first post on the overcrowding at Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) was posted in Apr 2008. It has been almost a year and there is still no news. Kuching residents has repeatedly called for the setting up of another general hospital to complement the present overworked SGH.

Many complaints received are about the lack of facilities at the SGH, which were the cause of many a frustration among the people.

SGH also lacked certain facilities and this has somewhat caused patients to endure longer appointment dates. Members of the public also had to go through the hassle of getting a parking space in the cramped hospital compound.

So while millions has been thrown into the space program and to buy frogs in Perak, the federal government is still closing their ears and eyes.

Related posts:
* Sarawak General Hospital badly overcrowded, Part 2
* Sarawak General Hospital badly overcrowded




From TheBorneoPost

Another general hospital urgently needed
By Puvaneswary Devindran

KUCHING: City folk are yearning for an additional general hospital for quite sometime now but nobody seems to know when it will ever materialise.

The latest one to join in the chorus is the central youth of Sarawak United People’s Party, which called for the setting up of another general hospital to complement the present overworked Sarawak General Hospital.

SUPP youth chairman Sih Hua Tong said they had received many complaints about the lack of facilities at the SGH, which were the cause of many a frustration among the people.

“They complained that SGH lacked certain facilities and this has somewhat caused patients to endure longer appointment dates,” he told a press conference here yesterday.

He said members of the public also had to go through the hassle of getting a parking space in the cramped hospital compound.

He said gratitude and appreciation no doubt should go to the health workers, and the people knew that the hospital was doing its best to cater to their needs but one general hospital was simply not enough.

“We urge the federal government through the Health Ministry to quickly set up another general hospital to provide better medical facilities to the people,” he said.

He hoped Health Minister Datuk Liow Tiong Lai would come here to see for himself the situation first-hand at the SGH.

The need for a second general hospital has been making headlines in many local newspapers of late.

Last year, Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud announced the need for the city to have two more general hospitals – one to be located between the city and Santubong and the other, in rapid growing Samarahan.

He said plans for these hospitals had to be drawn up as soon as possible because by 2020, this city would have a population of about a million people.

“It is an open secret that Kuching is in urgent need of another general hospital. This is further compounded by the fact that the hospital is a specialist referral hospital in the state.

“Although the newly refurbished wings is appreciated, this still does not solve the age-old problem of having not enough beds.

It was also reported in January last year that the best estimates put the number (of bed) at around 800, which is far from adequate with the city’s population.

In May last year, the Health Minister on his visit to the hospital said the government was looking at two options to solve overcrowding at the hospital. One was to build a second public hospital and the other one was to acquire an existing facility.

Liow said the authorities were studying these options although the long-term plan was that another hospital might be needed to complement SGH.

Besides SGH, there are three other hospitals in the city; Normah Medical Specialist Centre, Kuching Specialist Centre, and Timberland Medical Centre. All are either privately run or government linked.

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