In a written Dewan Negara response, health minister Dzulkefly Ahmad said of the 149 hospitals and institutions under his ministry, 124 of them are equipped with OTs, totalling up to 690 OTs nationwide.
He said of the 690, 75 or 10.9% are not at optimum functionality, attributing this to insufficient staff and obsolete equipment, among others.
“Each OT must meet specific standards to ensure surgeries are conducted safely and properly.
“This includes basic anaesthesia and surgical equipment, as well as a minimum number of staff such as nurses, medical officers, anaesthetists and surgeons.
“If these requirements are not met, the theatre must be temporarily closed,” he said.
Dzulkefly was responding to a question by Senator Dr RA Lingeshwaran about the total number of OTs nationwide and how many of them were unusable.
He said his ministry was managing the situation via the implementation of the cluster hospital concept and optimisation of OT usage.
Under the concept, healthcare staff work in any hospital within their respective clusters according to surgery schedules, improving OT use in hospitals without specialists.
Dzulkefly also said the ministry is implementing phased replacements of essential OT equipment and upgrades to substandard OTs via development projects, according to priority.
Lingeshwaran later responded to the ministry, urging it to fully operationalise all its OTs, given the long waiting times for surgeries nationwide.
“For example, I have been told that waiting times (for cardiothoracic surgery patients) can run up to a year for a procedure. Some of them do not even make it to the operation date,” he said.
Lingeshwaran also pointed to a report by The Star yesterday that heart surgeries at Serdang Heart Centre have halted again, slightly over a month after its four non-functional operating theatres underwent major repair works.
According to the report, the OTs at the centre’s new wing have to be closed for three weeks beginning Monday due to “multiple electrical issues”, affecting some 50 patients scheduled for heart surgeries, with another 1,000 on the waiting list.
Lingeshwaran said to address staffing issues, the ministry has to map out all of the OTs’ staffing needs and formulate a strategy to staff them accordingly.
“This can be done for OTs functioning within the acceptable technical parameters, which can be quickly equipped and operationalised,” he said.