PKR calls for review of flying doctor service

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/fmt-english/politics/sabah-and-sarawak/14170-pkr-calls-for-review-of-flying-doctor-service

PKR calls for review of flying doctor service

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:44

By Joseph Tawie

KUCHING: Sarawak PKR has called for a full review and renaming of the Flying Doctor Service (FDS) in Sarawak.

Its health bureau chief Dr Francis Ngu said the FDS should be renamed as Flying Medical Services (FMS) providing paramedical staff and community nurses instead of doctors.

"We would achieve the same or comparable public health outcomes with paramedical staff as with the current doctors. Currently the FDS is highly expensive for both logistics and personnel," he said.

Ngu said that while the FDS should not be restricted to one or two sorties per day, it must however improve ground personnel through village health promoters, facilities and equipment rather than focus on improving service delivery.

“Should there not be health promotion talks, demonstrations instead of just ‘pills-for all’ services?”

“Should there not be rural health promoters at all locations, to provide continuous synergism to the service of the FDS/FMS staff?” he asked.

Ngu was responding to Chief Minister Taib Mahmud's call on Saturday urging the federal and state governments to map out a more “realistic” plan in view of the scattered population in the state.

He reminded the governments that Sarawakians were spread out in 6,000 settlements, out which 60 percent consisted of fewer than 50 families.

“As long as the population was not concentrated and without easy transport, more efforts must be placed on the flying doctor service,” Taib had said.

Commenting on Taib's statement, Ngu suggested that where small plane landing airstrips are made available, for instance at Bario, Ba’Kelalan and Long Seridan, the FDS should be upgraded by using fixed winged aircrafts.

He also proposed that more landing strips be built for fixed winged aircrafts at remote locations, if population concentration justifies.

“Such a service would allow more staff and equipment to be flown example for dental service and eye screening,” Ngu said.

He added, that FDS/FMS would be better served by a full time Flying Medical Services Corps, thereby developing special expertise in rural medicine and dentistry.

“While consolidating and even vastly improving the FDS, the stronger emphasis must be steadily increasing the rural reach by land and riverine transport infrastructure, and establishing static facilities where population numbers justify cost effectiveness,” he said.

Contract irregularities

The FDS was launched in September 1973 as a pilot project to bring modern medicine to people in very remote areas of Sarawak.

Among its aims were to medically treat people in remote areas and help them improve their health status so that they would be economically productive.

It was also to narrow down the disparity in the provision of Medical and Health Services between urban and rural and remote interiors which are not easily accessible by normal means of communications.

In addition the government also hoped to make its presence felt in these remote locations which otherwise could easily fall prey to the influence of the insurgents.

Following the initial success of the white-coated doctor's visit to the longhouses which had never seen such personnel before, the government decided to have the FDS as a permanent service.

However recently FDS has been seeing a series of setbacks.

“The FDS is an expensive service which was put in place as much for political expediency of government rural reach in the 1970s, as for focused service provision," said Ngu.

"It was meant to be a stop-gap measure till the development of transport infrastructure, whence static service will replace the FDS.

"In recent years, there have been widespread service disruptions, leading to much dissatisfaction from rural communities concerned.

“Much of this failure has been traced by an opposition legislators to contract irregularities, involving political cronies,” he added.