Health system being strenghthened to face future pandemics - Khairy

KUALA LUMPUR: Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has stressed that efforts to strengthen the country's public health system must be made from now, to enable his ministry to address public health problems in the coming years.

He said this after taking into account the lessons from COVID-19, as well as the possibility of other pandemics occurring in the future.

"We know that the COVID-19 pandemic is not the only pandemic that humans will face and we will face many more pandemics. This is not going to be the last pandemic," he said.

Therefore, he said the transformation that adopts the concept of value-based healthcare must be implemented at the hospital level, in order to produce the desired health solutions.

"Through this step, we will be able to understand the value of investments that need to be made, thus, we believe that spending will be more efficient while enabling us to increase equality or equity of health, with investments based on value-based healthcare," he said at a press conference after opening a dialogue session in conjunction with the Health Ministry (MOH) hospital directors' conference.

On the medicine supply shortage, Khairy said the MOH always monitors the issue, especially involving medicines that contain active ingredients.

He said that based on random checks carried out by the MOH recently, it was found that 85 per cent of the 47 health facilities, involving private hospitals, clinics, and community pharmacies, experienced at least one type of drug shortage.

"Most of them are medicines used for common illnesses such as cough, cold, fever and antibiotics for children," he said.

Commenting further, he said as of June 16, a total of 1,231 products with active ingredients have been sent to product registration holders to get feedback in terms of availability.

"We have received 50 per cent feedback from product registration holders. Any products that are in shortage, with alternative products, have been reported to the hospital association and so on, so that they can obtain alternative medicines.

"Secondly, as I announced last week, the MOH has agreed to lend medicines to private health facilities that do not have enough supply of medicines," he said, adding that the shortage of medicines in the country is expected to stabilise next month.

-- BERNAMA