Private hospitals volunteer to assist public in vaccine registration

The Association of Private Hospital Malaysia (APHM) is looking forward to work with the Ministry of Health (MOH) on the registration of public and private patients in private hospitals for the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme.

APHM president Dr Kuljit Singh said it is currently in communication with the Special Committee on Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee (JKJAV) to have the finer details sorted out and proposed to start almost immediately.

"We hope to increase the options for the public and private patients to register manually with the assistance of our staff at our private hospitals into the system.

"This would be for the free vaccines provided by the government. Private hospitals are currently in discussion to confirm our commitment to vaccinate the public using the vaccines provided by the government," he said in a statement today.

This came after Minister of Health Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba was reported as saying MOH will identify the causes of the majority of Malaysians who have yet to register for the COVID-19 vaccine.

It was also reported that MOH was targeting 70 to 80 per cent of Malaysians to register for the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme, but thus far only 7.6 million out of 26.7 million had registered through the MySejahtera application.

Dr Kuljit said there are about 210 private hospitals in this country with 152 members of APHM which are all strategically situated throughout the country including the main towns in Sabah and Sarawak.

He pointed out that there were 1.1 million admissions in private hospitals and 3.8 million out-patient visitations in 2018.

"We believe with these numbers, our effort in getting more citizens and other residents in this country registered for the vaccine will enhance the vaccination programme," he added.

According to the statement, APHM was also hopeful with the effort of assisting patients in private hospitals with the vaccination programme and private hospitals could also commence the private vaccination programme parallelly for economic frontliners as soon as the availability of vaccines is attained.

-- BERNAMA