I refer to the malaysiakini report HIV/Aids epidemic could increase fourfold .

For far too long, the Ministry of Health has ignored primary healthcare and now we probably have reached a perilous stage of our development as a nation. Early ministers and director-generals primarily focused on primary healthcare with its emphasis on prevention and health education stressing the importance of a clean environment and water.

Today with the ever looming presence of avian flu, SAR, malaria and tuberculosis, Malaysians currently are hit also by hypertension, diabetes and heart disease afflictions which could have been easily avoided if only Malaysia had learned from developed nations and taken early steps to aggressively teach health education to schools and to the general public.

Heart disease saw a significant drop in the US in the eighties as a result of intense public education regarding the dangers of unhealthy food and the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle and exercise.

In Malaysia health policies are hopelessly bogged down by a poor managerial system and politics. For starters, perhaps the minister's post should be transferred to another political party as progress under the MCA has seen numerous blunders. The onus appears to be on giving suppliers and contractors work to do, vis a vis more hospital projects, buying equipment and now, unbelievably, the importing of foreign 'sinsehs' (traditional medicine practitioners) to be placed in the healthcare system.

Director-generals or CEOs or whatever they are called that lead a healthcare managerial system must be someone with a strong basis in primary healthcare.

In fact, the first duty of a responsible government must surely be to provide an excellent primary healthcare system and emergency services. Acute care services with its multitude of problems, especially non-functioning hospitals, overcrowded hospitals; overworked doctors should be farmed out to the private sector or corporatised and kept in the government.

Holding onto this sector will only weaken our resources which by the way is not infinite and further defocusses the Health Ministry. As it is the ministry has wasted too much time on mundane matters such the new Private Healthcare Act, recognition of foreign private medical colleges and now the implementation of traditional medicine.

We cannot possibly be waiting for an African situation. The wake-up call was sounded years ago but I am afraid. we never woke up.