Health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad said with just 60 geriatricians in government, teaching and private hospitals nationwide, there was an urgent need to ramp up more specialists in the field.
However, he admitted that it would be an uphill battle to get doctors to specialise in the field, with an average of eight geriatricians produced annually.
“It has been difficult to get medical graduates and medical officers to be interested in this. We are talking to the higher education ministry to increase these numbers.
“At the same time, we have to drive more to be interested, perhaps by incentivising them to take up this speciality,” he told reporters in Balik Pulau today.
Dzulkefly said this in response to a specialist who called on the government to ensure sufficient numbers of geriatricians as Malaysia heads towards becoming an aged nation by 2047.
Dr Osman Ali of Universiti Kuala Lumpur’s Royal College of Medicine Perak told FMT this was necessary to ensure proper medical care for those aged 65 and above, who would make up 14% of the population in a little over two decades time.
Last October, deputy health minister Lukanisman Awang revealed a critical shortage of geriatricians nationwide, with 33 based in public hospitals and 14 in private hospitals.
Lukanisman said that ideally, there should be one specialist per 10,000 people, “but we only have 0.18 experts for a population of 10,000”.
Dzulkefly said today Universiti Malaya was the sole institution offering geriatric specialist courses in the country, and even then only three to eight students signed up yearly.
Earlier, he announced several ongoing and upcoming projects to enhance healthcare facilities in Penang, including the Bandar Tasek Mutiara health clinic in Seberang Perai South, costing RM30 million. Another health clinic will be built at Mak Mandin, Butterworth, next year at a cost of RM54 million.
He said RM4.5 million had been allocated to repair and improve 11 dilapidated clinics in the state, as part of a larger RM150 million initiative nationwide.