I refer to the Malaysiakini report Cabinet hits pause button on IJN sale .

As medical care for serious diseases has not become affordable even for the middle income group, the government should not handover the Institut Jantung Negara (IJN) to the private sector.

I have been handling welfare work related to poor in the government for more than eight years and am well aware of their plight and the difficulties they face in obtaining financial assistance when they are faced with serious diseases.

The government should consider any future move carefully, especially now when there is an urgent need for a focused claim on the conscience of the nation. Health care is a service and must be more than a business. We should continue to implement justice in health care.

I welcome Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s move to defer the matter. The government should look at its principle of governance carefully and should not hand over its social responsibility to the private sector.

From April 2004 to January 2008 my service centre at the women, family and community development ministry had handled many problems and had obtained exemption for 133 cases totaling a sum of RM2,164,713.30.

We referred the cases to the IJN Medical Welfare Officers who will perform the assessment and give exemptions on the spot.

IJN officers also sat as volunteers at my service centre. I am not certain whether the same level of cooperation would prevail if IJN was privatised.

The Yayasan Kebajikan Negara (YKN) which comes under the ministry also disbursed RM978,096.24 to help 938 patients who sought treatment at IJN between January 2004 and January 2008.

We must continue to have the political will to consider that the basic access to health care can be a very great good. Crises in healthcare can happen to persons of all ages, economic conditions and degrees of social usefulness and in many instances such crises can only be helped by government organisations.

The government should have the political will and social understanding and provide cost effective health care to the necessary cross-section of Malaysian society.

This can be done if the government studies the core strengths of the present healthcare systems and industry both in the public and private sectors.

The objective should be to provide affordable and accessible healthcare to the entire crosssection of Malaysian society.

We should look at health care from the bottom up, how it touches the unserved and under-served. And the private sector which looks at health as business will not have the culture or archival memory of the government to do this.

The IJN was the brainchild of Tun Dr Mahathir, the former prime minister and it came into being during his time and since then has saved thousands of lives.

Without it few Malaysians, many of whom could not afford to go abroad would have died for want of care and treatment.

The last thing the government should do to IJN is to hand it over to the private sector. Affordable and accessible health care is an essential urgent national priority.

We need to reform the nation’s healthcare system and this reform must look meet the needs of the poor and uninsured.

The writer is MIC deputy president and former deputy minister of women, family and community development.