IJN: Malaysians our first priority

2009/11/22

KUALA LUMPUR: The National Heart Institute has given an assurance that it will stick to its obligations to serve Malaysians first.

Since its incorporation in 1992, IJN has recorded more than 1.5 million outpatients and 150,000 inpatients.

Statistics show that foreign - ers, including expatriates in Malaysia, who sought treatment at IJN numbered just one per cent of its patients last year.

“This ratio is insignificant.

We are fully aware of the need to serve Malaysians first and will ensure that this is done.

The number of foreign patients will not jeopardise our provision of services to Malaysians, ” it said in response to the Consumers Association of Penang’s letter to the New Straits Times and published in its Letters pages.

In the letter, CAP president S.M. Mohamed Idris ex - pressed concern over IJN collaborating with eight American companies, including three insurance companies, to send patients from the United States to IJN for treatment.

Idris said that when IJN was launched in 1992, it was with the objective of providing quality healthcare for the poor and middle-class.

He said the government promised that IJN would be a centre that served anyone with heart disease and would not be an exclusive hospital for the r ich.

Idris said the Health Ministr y’s Malaysian Healthcare Travel Council’s (MHTC) deal meant that IJN would soon be forsaking the very people for whom it was created for American dollars.

However, IJN said the rela - tionship established with the American companies was to support the government’s efforts to put Malaysia on the medical travel industry radar.

It said it entered into a collaboration with these companies when they, along with five other Malaysian healthcare and hospital groups led by MHTC, participated in the second World Medical Tourism and Global Health Congress in Los Angeles from Oct 26 to 28.