The government should upgrade and restructure the present health care set-up instead of privatising it, said Keadilan president Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail today.

She said the government should not proceed with its plans to privatise public hospitals and health care services as the move will only cause the quality of their services to deteriorate.

In addition, by going ahead with the privatisation plans, the government will also be breaking its promise made before the 1999 general elections, she added.

"The government should continue to play a provider role by investing more funds in upgrading facilities and restructuring the management of government hospitals as well as establishing a primary care system," she said in a statement.

She further added that experiences in other countries have clearly demonstrated that privatisation increased costs and made the health system inequitable and less accessible to the poorer sectors of the population.

Wan Azizah was referring to a recent statement made by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad that the government will continue with it's health care privatisation plans.

The government initiated its health care privatisation projects in parcels in the early 1990s. Plans to privatise government hospitals in 1998 raised vigorous public objections from citizen groups and opposition parties, resulting in the initiative to be aborted before the 1999 general elections.

She also said that Mahathir's Aug 28 statement in The Sun , that the public was receiving free medicine, was misleading.

"They pay taxes in various ways," said Wan Azizah who is also Keadilan's Heath bureau chairperson.

She added the government should not delegate its social responsibilities to unelected and profit-driven companies.

High costs

Wan Azizah said that costs in certain health sectors have skyrocketed following privatisation projects.

She gave examples of the government's annual drug bill doubling in 1994 just a year after the Government Medical Store was privatised.

The opposition leader also said that the cost for support services such as laundry, cleaning, maintenance and waste disposal increased from RM140 million in 1996 to RM450 million the next year when these services were privatised.

"These and other instances of privatisation have inflated the government health bill, but none of them have increased the income or the morale of government doctors and paramedics."

She said the government's failure to regulate the growth of private hospitals has also resulted in gross shortages of doctors and paramedics in the public sector, which in turn created overwork and low morale.

This has led to the public buying health insurances so that they could afford private health services, added Wan Azizah.

"If this trend continues and if the government continues to privatise health care, the ones to reap the benefits will be the health insurance companies and corporate hospitals," she warned.

"Yet under the Eighth Malaysian Plan, the government is spending more money to build hospitals that will be privatised later. This means it will be giving away the people's money to its cronies."