Something is not right at the Cardio Unit at the Hospital University Kebangsaan Malaysia in Cheras.

Professors and specialists who have left, as several did recently, are not replaced. The unit accepts no new referrals of cardiac cases. The thrice-weekly consultations is reduced to twice-weekly.

This places a higher workload on the unit. Cardiac patients who come for their regular and follow-up checks are either discharged or given a date a year ahead for their next visit. Or they are told to go to private hospitals or clinics.

Some cardiac patients had been outpatients for years, coming for their check-ups and medicine regularly. Now they are told they are on their own. They must find new clinics, where they must start afresh without their records.

Besides this, they now must find alternate ways to check their blood pressure and have their other tests done. Many of these patients, retired with small savings and pensions, cannot afford to go to private clinics.

These cardiac patients are often retired elderly men and women and now they are in a spot because HUKM has let them down. In short, the HUKM cardio unit has decided it does not want to treat cardiac patients any more.

There is a view of the government, and reflected in the HUKM attitude towards cardiac patients, that going to government and university hospitals means that one has to demean oneself and surrender one's self-respect.

If one does not have the money, according to this 'people-caring government', one does deserve any self-respect. When a teaching hospital such as HUKM decides to cut its services, it sentences many of its outpatients to death.

Many cannot afford to pay the extra costs involved; many do not have savings.

Of course, these patients could be transferred to other government hospitals. But other than to put pressure on the limited resources of these hospitals, does this solve the problem?

And let's not miss the point here - HUKM's cardio unit is in this mess because professors and specialists have quit. And this in turn is ingeniously taken by the hospital authorities as a way to cut expenses.

Is this what is has come to? Government hospital specialists who leave are not replaced, and the units they run are eventually closed.

Or is this an official way to tell the old folk that it is better for them to die rather than be a burden on the government?