The measure to address the glut of new doctors by imposing a five-year freeze on new medical courses offered by local institutions of higher learning is too little, too late.

At the moment there are 33 institutes of higher learning offering 47 medical courses. There are also medical graduates from foreign institutions.

Up to 3000 medical graduates are produced annually. This glut of medical graduates has far outpaced the existing capacity to train them as housemen (doctor under training).

As a result the housemen are lacking clinical experience and not getting sufficient supervision from specialists.

For a medical doctor, training during housemanship is the most important stage of his/her career because this is the time to put into practice theory learned as medical students, under the supervision and tutelage of senior doctors.

It is an essential step before a doctor can be registered as medical practitioner by the Malaysian Medical Council, and be granted a "license" to treat patients independently.

The difficulty in providing adequate training for housemen was brought up by me in the Parliament last year during budget debate.

It has also long being acknowledged by Malaysian Medical Association and the Health Ministry. Unfortunately, there was little concerted effort to address this problem.

The announcement by the Minister of Higher Education, Khaled Nordin, on the freeze is certainly long overdue. It shows poor coordination between ministries. It also reflects poor planning by the ministries concerned.

The freeze will not solve the immediate problem because the glut will continue. We still have to face with the problem of providing quality training for 3000 housemen annually. To address the problem I therefore urge:

1. Apart from the freeze on new medical courses the Minister of Higher Education should also order the existing institutes of higher learning to reduce the intake to existing courses to a more manageable level.

2. The cabinet to set up a joint action committee involving the Higher Education Ministry and the Health Ministry so that the demand and the planned supply of new doctors in the country can be rationalised.

DR LEE BOON CHYE is a Member of Parliament and Parti Keadilan Rakyat Health Bureau Chief.