Dr Hirman Ismail, the deputy director of the ministry’s medical development division, cited the significantly greater number of master’s programmes as evidence against these claims.

“Now, we (the ministry) have 120 programmes under the master’s category, compared to only 14 fields that we are implementing for only 17 qualifications in the parallel pathway,” he said during a media briefing on the amendments to two important health ministry-related bills today.

Hirman also said a substantial portion of the RM365.4 million spent by the ministry from 2019 to 2023 was dedicated to the master’s programmes.

“Of this allocation, 4%, or RM13 million, was designated for parallel pathway programmes (PPP), while 96%, or RM 352.3 million, was allocated to the master’s programmes at public universities,” he said.

For this year, he said, the master’s programmes and PPPs have been allocated RM 142.4 million and RM10 million, respectively.

Earlier, health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad told the media there were allegations of bias against the medical master’s programmes.

Dzulkefly had tabled the Medical Act 1971 Amendment Bill for the first reading today.

The proposed amendments follow the controversy over the Malaysian Medical Council’s (MMC) refusal to recognise certain PPPs such as the one for cardiothoracic surgeons who qualified from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, even as government hospitals face a dire shortage of such specialists.

The MMC is facing lawsuits from four cardiothoracic surgeons, six specialists from USM, and a Malaysian neurologist over rejected applications for listing in the National Specialist Register.