The Health Ministry will ensure that the air-conditioning system in all public hospitals are working optimally at all times to bring comfort and convenience to the people, its minister, Dr S Subramaniam said.

As such, he said all public hospitals directors nationwide had been nstructed to submit a report on the condition of the air-conditioning system at their respective hospitals to enable immediate action to be taken to avoid disruption in the service delivery.

“Some hospitals are very old, some of their instruments and air-conditioning system are old, they might break down,” he told reporters after attending the MIC Ponggal Festival celebration at the party’s headquarters in Kuala Lumpur today.

He said this in response to the air-conditioning system breakdown occurring in public hospitals in Kuantan, Selayang and Segamat.

Subramaniam said repair work on the air-conditioning system at the three hospitals had been carried out with the work in Segamat Hospital which began on Jan 9 was expected to be completed today.

Meanwhile, the minister also urged the public with information on online data-theft activity involving data of patients at both public and private hospitals to come forward to enable the ministry to lodge a report to the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) for further action.

“All quarters with information, including the media, should share the information with us and the hospital concerned so that we can lodge a report to the MCMC to enable actions to be taken to the culprits,” he said.

A Malay daily today reported that there was a syndicate detected to have purchased patient data stolen by hackers from public and private hospital databases in the country.

The report also said that the syndicate was believed to have acted as the middleman to sell the data to pharmaceutical companies conducting businesses online.

- Bernama

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