KUALA LUMPUR (July 15): The Health Ministry (MoH) maintains impartiality in recognising specialist training programmes, whether for local medical graduates or through parallel pathways, including sponsorship for these programmes.

Its minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad affirmed this, citing this year's allocation of RM142.4 million for local medical graduate programmes, compared to just RM10 million for parallel pathways.

“So any perception that we favour overseas medical programmes or the parallel pathway is inaccurate; financially, the numbers clearly show otherwise,” he said.

He was speaking at a media briefing on amendments to two laws, namely the Medical Act 1971 (Act 50) and the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988, at the Parliament building on Monday.

Earlier, Dr Dzulkefly tabled the Medical (Amendment) Bill 2024 for its first reading to amend the Medical Act 1971, aimed at improving allocations for the recognition of qualifications and specialist training for medical practitioners.

Explaining the issue further, MOH medical professional development branch deputy director Dr Hirman Ismail disclosed that the government has allocated RM365.4 million to sponsor MOH medical officers for specialist training over five years, from 2019 to 2023.

Of this total, Dr Hirman said 96%, or RM352.3 million, supports medical graduate programmes at local universities, with the remaining RM13 million for parallel pathway programmes.

He said out of 296 qualifications listed in Schedule Four of Act 50, 115 are from local higher education institutions, encompassing both public and private universities.

“While qualifications from other countries such as the United Kingdom only amount to about 68 listings. This demonstrates that qualifications from local institutions significantly outnumber those from abroad,” he said.

He said there are currently 120 local medical graduate pathway programmes compared to 14 fields involving only 17 qualifications in the parallel pathway.

The Medical (Amendment) Bill 2024 aims to empower the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) to recognise qualifications and specialist training for the registration of medical practitioners and specialists.

These amendments also seek to enhance allocations concerning the registration of medical practitioners as specialists and establish processes for recognising qualifications and specialist training.

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