BY: JOSHUA NG

If the Covid-19 pandemic has done any good, it is to highlight that Malaysia’s archaic National Health Care System is in dire need of being revamped to ensure it remains relevant to Malaysians in the future.

There are obvious indications that the National Health Care System has failed to cope well with the burgeoning Covid-19 pandemic and there is visible evidence that there are structural weaknesses in how the country copes with disaster.

Covid-19 requires disaster management now as the National Health Care System has failed to cope with the increasing number of infections which shows that the country is not prepared with any kind of contingency measures.

Adding insult to injury, there are medical doctors, professionals who are on strike very much like organized labour unions and who have no choice but to resort to this measure to disclose how low the profession has sunk.

Malaysia is ill prepared and in chaos and confusion because of rampant corruption and politicking by politicians who do not have the interest of the people at heart to serve humanity instead these government leaders are self-serving and self-seeking individuals.

Making matters worse is the private health care sector which serves the elite in this country as the astronomical costs they charge for their services is beyond the means of the ordinary rakyat who crowd and fill public sector hospitals.

There must be mechanisms put in place to regulate the private health care sector which have long been profiteering from the misery of affluent patients who dare not step into a public hospital because of all the bad publicity.

The National Health Care System is long overdue for an overhaul and perhaps from the bitter lessons we are learning from this Covid-19 pandemic we will be better off and wiser in managing the health of every Malaysian from cradle to grave.

-THE MALAYSIA VOICE

** The views expressed on this opinion is of the writer and not the publisher