DAP today called on the government to embark on a 10-year Quality Medical Education Master Plan for Malaysia to become a world-class medical education, health-care and biomedical centre.

Its chairperson, Lim Kit Siang said in a statement that this can be done if the public and private universities in Malaysia apply meritocracy in their intakes.

Lim also recommended the government to set up at least one public medical university in every state in Malaysia and encourage the establishment of community-based private medical colleges.

Besides, he urged the private medical colleges to produce quality medical graduates to work for the people and to carry out research and development in the medical field.

The former Opposition Leader said this in response to Universiti Malaya vice chancellor Prof Dr Anuar Zaini, who yesterday sounded the alarm over the decline in teaching standards in public and private medical schools in Malaysia.

Anuar pointed out that a lack of qualified academic staff was affecting medical education and the quality of doctor produced.

"The problem said to have been afflicted the country for almost three decades after the United Kingdom General Medical Council (GMC) withdrew its recognition for MBBS of Universiti Malaya from 1985," said Lim.

Take cue from alarm

"In addition, the university authorities also failed to remedy major deficiencies in its medical school programmes although given seven years to do so," Lim added.

He claimed that despite having seven public universities which offer medical programme, Malaysia has not been able to establish itself as a centre of medical education.

"The parliament should take cue from the alarm sounded by Anuar yesterday and transform the current parliamentary debate on 2003 Budget into a major post-mortem on the quality of both medical education and health care in Malaysia," he added.

Yesterday, Anuar disclosed that the ratio of medical lecturer to students in Malaysia is currently 1:16 while the ideal ratio is 1:5 as in Singapore.

Lim also questioned on the private medical colleges which are allowed to twin with foreign medical school of dubious standard, such as the North Sumatra Medical University.