I read with interest the statement by Liow Tiong Lai in Star Monday 15 Nov regarding the plan to recruit doctors from India, Pakistan and Egypt. While I appreciate the efforts by our minister of health to improve the healthcare system in the country, I truly wonder if they remember what happened when we recruited doctors from Egypt around 7 years ago.

I was working in Sabah at that time when the first batch of Egyptian sub-specialists came over. I remember that we had a cardiologist and a respiratory physician at that time. At first we were grateful for the arrival of these much hyped sub-specialists.

However, our joy was short-lived as we realised that they were all hype and nothing much else. Their command of English was poor at best and their clinical skills were questionable. The cardiologist we had was hardly up to date in terms of her cardiology knowledge and had to be taught by junior medical officers such as myself.

The respiratory physician could not cope with the pressure and left very soon after arrival. It was also a little scary to realise that their basic medical knowledge was also poor. Needless to say, most of the Egyptians left within 2 months of arrival in our hospital. The lack of basic medical knowledge in many of them came as a bit of a surprise considering that Egypt regularly produces some world class doctors.

I would urge the Ministry of Health to consider scrutinising the qualifications of these doctors in detail before bringing them over to avoid a repeat of what happened 7 years ago.

More pertinently, I would urge the Ministry to consider investing in local human capital and train more local doctors to become specialists and sub specialists. We have the numbers now, with a huge number of medical officers joining the workforce each year and no doubt many of them will make fine specialists or sub-specialists.

Training for specialists and sub specialists should be tailored to be world class. Some of the sub specialities, such as urology, currently have foreign board exams as part of their curriculum, and this move should be commended and expanded to other sub specialities. When we develop our own human capital, we develop our own saleability as a medical tourism destination, much as Thailand has.

Look at Bumrungrad Hospital in Thailand, most of the doctors there are local Thais with foreign board qualifications, and it is one of the top 10 medical tourism destinations in the world.

As for keeping more specialists in government service; the key is remuneration. Having said that, there would always be a disparity between the salary of a private practitioner and a government doctor, no matter what the government does.

One way around this is to attract large Pharma driven clinical trials to Malaysia, which could be a source of income to doctors, in addition to the currently allowed limited private practice. This, I feel would help develop services in the Ministry of Health in the long term and benefit the rakyat.