PARLIAMENT Twenty-five to 30 percent of housemen fail to complete their internships within the set time due to incompetency, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.

Deputy Health Minister Dr Hilmi Yahaya said this situation contributed to the problem of placement for new housemen as the current ones had to extend their training.

He said each year, there were about 5,000 new housemen who needed to undergo medical training.

"Admittedly, the problem of housemen is perpetual... because of their incompetency, they have to extend their training period and many other graduates cannot do their training," he said in reply to a supplementary question from Izani Husin (PAS-Pengkalan Chepa) during the Question-and-Answer session at the Dewan Rakyat today.

Izani had wanted to know the ministry's plans to increase the number of government hospitals and training hospitals.

Hilmi said at present, there were 44 training hospitals, including government hospitals and university hospitals.

"The ministry will increase the number of training hospitals... we want to include the Shah Alam Hospital and army hospitals, and the university hospitals have agreed to increase the slots for housemen so that they can increase the postings for them," he said.

Earlier, replying to the original question from Sapawi Ahmad (BN-Sipitang) on the standard of health in Malaysia according to international standards, Hilmi said that on Jan 5, the International Living magazine in its Annual Global Retirement Index 2017, ranked Malaysia as having the best health system in the world compared to 24 other countries.

"This is an honour which has been awarded to Malaysia three years in a row, and the Bloomberg Survey in 2014 also ranked Malaysia in the list of 30 countries in the world with the most efficient healthcare system," he said.

- Bernama