IN the best interest of the health of the population, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) should consider the suggestion to temporarily open up its cardiothoracic surgery postgraduate programme to non-Bumiputeras, said the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA).
Its president Dr Azizan Abdul Aziz said the country is facing an acute shortage of specialists and cardiothoracic surgeons are one of the specialisations most in demand.
“There are people waiting between six months to a year for a bypass surgery in our public healthcare system. Some die while waiting,” she said in a statement on Thursday (May 9).
“And with the high prevalence of non-communicable diseases in the country, we can expect the number of people needing these life-saving procedures performed by cardiothoracic surgeons to increase.”
Dr Azizan said everyone is impacted by shortages in specialists, and as it stands, the medical association is doubtful that the country will be able to meet the target of 28,000 medical specialists by 2030.
“We need UiTM to support efforts to produce more cardiothoracic surgeons by opening it up to all Malaysians who wish to specialise. Healthcare should never be politicised,” she stressed.
“If UiTM can open its doors to international students, we don’t see why it can’t open up to all fellow Malaysians on a need basis.”
Health news portal CodeBlue recently reported that UiTM was willing to “temporarily” accept non-Bumiputera trainees from parallel pathway programmes into its cardiothoracic surgery programme.
Prof Dr Raja Amin Raja Mokhtar from the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at the Faculty of Medicine at UiTM had suggested this as a solution to the issue of unrecognised parallel pathways for training in cardiothoracic surgery.
Dr Raja Amin had said the UiTM-National Heart Institute (IJN) cardiothoracic surgery parallel pathway training programme was the only one of its kind offered locally.
The only alternative training is the Health Ministry’s parallel pathway with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) that the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) has refused to recognise for specialist registration on the National Specialist Register (NSR).
Meanwhile, Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Zambry Abdul Kadir said there have been no discussions on opening UiTM’s cardiothoracic surgery postgraduate programme to non-Bumiputera students.
Zambry said there was a need to address underlying issues before considering the proposal to admit non-Bumiputera students, adding that his ministry has not engaged in any discussions nor have they received official communication on the matter.
“It is crucial to resolve the fundamental issues before delving into such proposals,” he was reported as saying. – May 9, 2024
Main pic credit: The Sun Daily
