PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry will seek a bigger budget to ensure quality in the delivery of services to the people.
Health Minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said it was a must for any government to place priority on healthcare for its people and small budgets such as what the ministry had been allocated was an obstacle to the delivery of proper services to the rakyat.
“This is what I will fight for... healthcare affects all, but the allocation so far has been disappointing. As a Cabinet minister, I will ensure that the proper emphasis is given to allocations as, beside education and development for the people, healthcare is one of the most important issues.
“Besides that, if the budget allocation is large enough, we believe the healthcare sector can contribute at least six per cent to the nation’s gross domestic product, when all this while it has only contributed about four per cent,” he said in his first press conference as a minister after a briefing by the ministry’s senior officers.
Dzulkefly said other areas of priority for him would be the empowerment of healthcare services and security, and the welfare and workload of medical professionals.
“All of these, of course, are closely related to having a larger budget. Take for instance the workload of doctors; with a larger allocation, we can lower the doctor-patient ratio.
“Right now, each doctor roughly takes care of 600 patients... we hope to lower this to a ratio of 1:400 so that more focus and quality healthcare can be provided for each patient.”