Gerakan wants the government to stop issuing licences for medical schools until such time when the standard of our medical graduates can be assured.

Gerakan central committee member Dr Hsu Dar Ren said there were simply too many medical schools in the country to ensure only competent medical graduates are being produced.

He reasoned that with too many medical schools, the admission standard might be compromised. In the past, only the cream and those with the best results were admitted to medical schools and this trend should not be comprised.

He said the sudden increase in medical schools might also result in fierce competition to enroll students and there was a real danger that some of the schools might lower their entry requirements.

“Inevitably, there will also be a shortage of qualified and experienced medical teachers as well as a shortage of hospitals big enough for these medical students to receive proper training and teaching,” he said in a statement, adding that there were only 4 medical schools in 2000 which had now mushroomed to 25, of which 10 are public and 15 private.

Dr Hsu said while it was good to churn out many medical graduates to meet the country’s requirement, the quality and standard of the graduates must not be compromised.

He proposed that one way to ensure high standard and avoid producing insufficiently trained medical doctors was to invite external examiners to jointly supervise the examinations of our local medical undergraduates.

The government should also ensure that the entry requirements of students into local medical schools meet the required standards.

Dr Hsu was commenting on concerns expressed by the Health and Higher Education ministries on the need to have satisfactory quality of medical students graduating from abroad.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said the two ministries were working together to ensure a “satisfactory quality” of medical students graduating from abroad while Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin said his ministry would keep a close eye on foreign medical schools after a task force discovered that a sizeable number of Malaysian students at Mansoura University, Egypt, did not possess non-objection certificates (NOCs)

The NOC is a certificate issued by the Higher Education Ministry before Malaysian students can study medicine abroad. Students must also have the NOC before they can apply for Government loans or scholarships.
Dr Hsu also urged the government to immediately find ways to alleviate the problem of too many house officers being posted in the wards of some of our public hospitals.