The health ministry’s insistence on segregating dental general practitioners and specialists will not improve the quality of dental services but will instead result in expensive procedures and long waits that will only burden patients.
The Dental Bill 2017 has been discussed between the health ministry and the dental fraternity since 2012 during Liow Tiong Lai’s tenure as minister of health. A sticking point throughout is the intention of the health ministry to bar dental general practitioners from certain procedures and restrict the right to perform these procedures to specialists instead.
Section 34 (1) says: “A practitioner whose name does not appear in the Specialist Division of the Dental Register shall not practice as a dental specialist in that specialty.” This means only dentists with post-graduate specialist qualification specified by the Dental Council and recognised by the Dental Specialists’ Evaluation Committee will be considered as specialists.
The intention of encouraging the professionalisation of the dental fraternity is noble, but only when it will not result in a massive backlog of cases and expensive dental fees for the public.
The segregation of dental general practitioners and specialists is not even feasible and realistic within the government’s own health service. There are very few specialists within the service and there is an acute shortage of specialists in smaller towns and secondary cities (particularly in Sabah and Sarawak). The same goes for private practice.
Currently, dental general practitioners are involved in areas which may be labelled as “specialists”, such as restorative dental, prosthodontics, periodontics, orthodontic, endodontic, and oral surgery. If Section 34 (1) is to be implemented, dental general practitioners will be relegated to do the most basic dental services. A patient will be required to see a dental general practitioner who will then recommend the person to a specialist.
The policy objective of the Dental Bill 2017 should be to improve the overall dental health of the nation and ensure most Malaysians are provided affordable dental care, and not to create new barriers to dental care for millions of ordinary Malaysians. The government and health ministry should explain to the public how Section 34 (1) of the Dental Bill 2017 can improve accessibility to dental care or result in inexpensive dental costs to the government and to the general public.
The Dental Bill 2017 was presented to parliament on Nov 28 and is expected to be passed today. The bill should not have been “parachuted” in such a manner with only practically a day for MPs to digest the content. The health ministry should have had the courtesy to present it much earlier, for instance, at the start of this parliamentary sitting on Oct 23.
We share the concerns and views of the Malaysian Dental Association and call on the Minister of Health Dr S Subramaniam to withdraw Section 34 (1) with an amendment to the bill. The talk that the bill cannot be amended is nonsensical. Just yesterday, the government, through minister Azalina Othman, just proposed an amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Act amendment bill to grant judges full discretion to decide on whether to hand down a death sentence or a life sentence by removing the need to have the Attorney-General’s certificate of consent.
Liew Chin Tong is DAP MP for Kluang, Alice Lau Kiong Yieng is DAP MP for Lanang, and Dr. Ng Kee Chung is a dentist and DAP member in Johor.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.