Kampar MP Dr Ko Chung Sen said there should be more investment in getting the equipment needed for government healthcare, especially in the treatment of cancer.

He said it was estimated that one in four Malaysians would suffer from cancer by the age of 75 years. It is also expected that there will be an increase of 15% in the number of cancer cases by 2020.

However, Ko said, the linear accelerator machine used for radiotherapy treatment is severely lacking in the government healthcare sector.

“The normal number of linear accelerators needed is eight per million population. Our country needs a total of 240 linear accelerators for our population of 30 million.

“Unfortunately, there are only 18 linear accelerators in the government sector, which is only 7.5% of the total need. This means 92.5% of the need for radiotherapy treatment will not be catered for,” he said in a statement.

Ko said even if the 38 linear accelerators in the private hospitals were taken into account, the country would still only manage to cover 23.33% of the total need.

He said even worse was the fact that many government hospitals in the northern region and the east coast had no linear accelerators at all.

These include hospitals in Perak, Kedah, Penang Island, Perlis and Pahang.

“Patients are forced to travel hundreds of kilometres to Kuala Lumpur for their treatment. What’s worse is these patients are already sick and weakened by their illnesses, making them unfit to travel. Or they may have to pay to have treatments in the private hospitals,” Ko said.

Ko said a linear accelerator cost between RM17 million to RM 19.6 million and as such the RM77 billion which would be spent on the 350km long HSR (High Speed Rail) was equivalent to 3,928 linear accelerators, or 16.3 times the need of the whole country.

He said for 2015 to 2017, the government had only allocated RM36.6 million to purchase two new linear accelerators in Sabah and Sarawak.

“The taxes and GST (goods and services tax) collected should have been spent in upgrading and equipping our hospitals,” he added.