Public Health: economy sends more people to Malaysia's government hospitals

Malaysia's government hospitals are clean (although often old), staffed with medical personnel that would not be out of place in the UK, don't have MRSA (unlike many in the UK) and cost what to Europeans is a ridiculously small amount of money. For example, a set of shoulder X-rays for one of our own staff recently cost the equivalent of just GBP15 - and the whole process including consultation, taking the X-rays and diagnosis took just 40 minutes.

Compare that to the UK where it is commonplace for such a simple activity to take six or seven hours for a walk-in - if they will see you at all in the absence of an emergency, and where it can cost six or seven pounds per day to park the car whilst hanging around.

Malaysia is well served with modern private hospitals and "polyclinics" plus specialists who operate independently of the hospital system. In fact, compared to the UK's rapidly disintegrating National Health Service, the cost, effectiveness and speed of healthcare in Malaysia is a joy. Like everywhere else, there are some practitioners that are not up to snuff - but because of direct access to specialists, word of mouth is a powerful means of choosing the right person. That's an option not generally available to most people - even private patients - in the UK.

Indeed, Malaysia's growing "medical tourism" sector demonstrates that UK trained surgeons operating with the most modern equipment in Kuala Lumpur can cost, including flights and after care in a hotel, a fraction of the cost of a similar operation in the UK. And operations can often be scheduled within a couple of days and invariably on a date to suit the patient.

But for many, the cost of private care in Malaysia is proving something they can do without as times get hard.

Yesterday, Deputy Minister of Health Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Ahmad told a conference in Ipoh, in the middle of Malaysia, that the past six months had seen a significant upsurge in the number of patients visiting government hospitals. Ths situation has reached the point where some clinics now remain open for an additional three or four hours each evening.

And, as low income families struggle to meet bills for medicines and additional care, the Minister has told hospitals to "be flexible" with payment schedules, amounts and even to consider total cancellation of charges in special cases of hardship.

That, the UK government might like to notice, is how universal healthcare should be done. Not with waiting lists running into years, patients dying on trolleys in corridors, pushing patients out of beds and onto relatives and outdoor (overworked) healthcare workers and, because they are no longer in hospital, rendering them liable to substantial bills for prescriptions.