Some years ago a Malaysian doctor-couple both obtained 'Asasi Scheme' scholarships to obtain specialist training in the UK. While they were there with their children and maid for three years - comprehensively supported by the Malaysian government for their training - both their university lecturer salaries were also credited as usual into their home bank accounts.

In addition to this double income for each of them, they were paid salaries for their house jobs by the UK National Health Service (NHS) as they had not informed the local NHS authority about their scholarship status.

They returned to practice in KL, brand new German luxury car in tow, and stayed on for a couple of years in public practice. Very soon, one of them was in surgical private practice with a major KL hospital and very slowly and grudgingly, began to pay back some of his 'bond' money.

Helmy Haja Mydin's Scholarships: Politicians' kids not a factor in 'bonding' justifies the fact that scholarship students stay on in the UK for training for the greater good of the Malaysian public and perhaps he has a point.

They would certainly be useful resources if they are required to return at a specified time, contribute to the development of public institutions all over the land, and discard any airs of intellectual superiority over locally trained specialists.

This latter sort of attitude has decimated several teaching departments, because of the intense rivalry between recently-returned specialists, each with a healthy amount of self-esteem.

Foreign-trained doctors returning to practice in Malaysia are sometimes misfits, akin to Formula 1 drivers forced to drive Protons on estate roads. Many lack even basic medico-cultural fluency that locally trained medical graduates are competent with.

They have high expectations which local hospitals cannot fulfill and instead of exhibiting their gratitude (and staying power) for being trained at much public expense, often jump ship for private practice pretty early on in their careers.

No, Malaysians at large do not really benefit extraordinarily from their expertise only the rich will do so in the private sector and from a look of current trends, in the university hospitals too (ever since private practice was allowed in these centres to placate academic physicians).

I think that there is no good reason to continue to send Malaysian students to expensive UK medical schools. This practice is a truly a colonial throwback. There are sufficient schools in the country or in other nearby Asian countries capable of providing our sponsored students with culturally relevant and high quality undergraduate medical training.

Special government to government arrangements can always be made for committed and talented individuals - who have served the public for a respectable period - to go to centres of excellence abroad (note that I did not say to the West) to obtain specialist training. This should be according to national needs rather than personal fancies.