Efforts were also being taken to resolve the shortages of medical equipment,
which formed the fundamentals in assisting the medical staff in their daily
operations.

Tiong said this after receiving reply from Health Ministry parliamentary
secretary S.G Sothinathan during the verbal question-answer session at the
recent parliamentary session last Thursday, adding that the ministry had
viewed the shortages as serious, thus  it was taking steps to deploy more
medical officers and staff in different positions to suit the daily challenge
of working in a short-handed environment.

Earlier, he had asked the minstry to explain whether the latter and his senior
ministerial officers had gone to the ground to familiarize and identity the
problems faced by the urban and rural hospitals throughout the country
including Bintulu in overcoming the problems relating to the shortages of
medical equipment as well as doctors and staff.

He said, Sothinathan had vehemently contended that the minister, Dato' Chua Jui Meng and his senior ministerial officials had make a point to frequently visit hospitals thorougout the country and familiarize with the problems faced by hospital and medical staff.

He was told too the ministry also frequently received feedbacks and reports
from hospitals on hospitals' activities, latest developments as well as their
problems.

On specific problems faced by Bintulu Hospital, he said the ministry had
always been sensitive to the relating issues raised.

Thus, the ministry had always given attention to improve and upgrade the
amenities and services at Bintulu hospital, after moving to the present RM99.5 million hospital.

Among positive changes that had taken place in Bintulu Hospital, he said was the number of beds had increased more than two folds from 129 to 273 beds. 

He said there were now four disciplines of specialists' services, namely, the
gynaecology, obsterics, orthopedic and anaesthetics as compared to only
surgery, gynaecology and obsterics.

Similary, he said the ministry would continue to deploy more specialists in
other health and medical disciplines, adding that there were 11 medical
officers including a contractual medical officer deployed at Bintulu hospital,
a number wiich had not changed since then.

Meanwhile, he revealed that the number of staff such as nurses, X-ray staff
and physiotherapists had also been increased accordingly.

Beside, the ministry said Bintulu hospital had also received additional
amenities such as additional operation rooms, maternity and delivery rooms,
intensive care services, daily treament centre, specialists' clinic and
adminstrative rooms, physiotherapy services, a visitors' lodging quarters and
others.

" The hospital has also been given several additional medical equipment such as ultrasound, fluoroscopy machine, anesthetics machine, ventilator,
arthroscopy, endoscopies, portable X-ray bronchoscopes and four ambulances "

Tiong revealed that hospital here would also receive an additional
haemodialysis machine and a refrigerator to store blood donation under basic allocations from the ministry this year.

Beside, he added that the ministry was always sensitive to the needs of
hospitals and it would continue to carry out efforts to upgrade the services
and amenities from time to time.

" On my part, I will continue to provide information and feedback to the
ministry so that the ministry could give more attention to the development of
Bintulu hospital"

What was the most important for Bintulu Hospital, the MP for Bintulu Tiong
King Sing said would be the government to continue to give better, if not the
best, services to the rakyat especially the poor and the uneducated from the
rural areas.

He also advised medical officers and other medical staff not to "cover-up"
their mistakes or other people's mistakes if there were weaknesses in the
hospital's operations or something had slackened in their effort to render
services to patients.

He said they must give their full co-operation to the higher authorities to
facilitate investigation especially in identifying problems that could
jeopaardize the image of hospital, and the government in general....END WITH NO PHOTO.