Cuepacs urges private hospitals to immediately accept, treat COVID-19 patients

Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (Cuepacs) president Adnan Mat said this was the best time for private hospitals to carry out the responsibility of saving the lives of Malaysians and not to push all problem cases that cannot be handled to government hospitals.

“Cuepacs does not want the announcement made by the government to be welcomed by only a small number of private hospital operators.

“At the moment, all parties should share their expertise and energy to save the country from the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said in a statement commenting on the Malaysian Economic and Rakyat Protection Assistance Package (Permai) announced by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin today.

He said private hospital operators should issue clear guidelines immediately to the government and the public on their readiness to accept and treat COVID-19 patients.

Meanwhile, Adnan said the prime minister’s assurance to increase the number of health personnel to more than 3,500 who will start work at the end of this month gave some relief to health workers.

However, he said, Cuepacs hopes that more members can be added to help the existing staff, as the number 3,500 is actually only able to reduce the workload of the Health Ministry (MOH) staff, not to mention the number of daily cases recorded was very high.

“The increase in COVID-19 cases every day is so significant that the public health system in our country is almost paralysed... health facilities and workers are no longer able to treat the COVID-19 patients which has reached thousands every day at this point.

“It not only witnessed cases of other patients not being handled effectively, even COVID-19 patients who were confirmed positive but were asymptomatic had to undergo self-treatment at home,” he said, adding that the increase in cases also put pressure on health workers who have become too tired almost losing the motivation to continue working.

He said Cuepacs found the situation very worrying because the paralysis of the country’s health system could put the safety of the people at greater risk.

Therefore, he said, Cuepacs hopes the government can expedite the distribution of allocations to increase the number of new health workers in order to alleviate the anxiety of existing health workers who are already too tired and weary.