Singapore’s health minister has acknowledged that the country has marked Malaysia as one of its ‘source countries’ when it comes to hiring doctors to work for its healthcare sector.
The admission was made by Ong Ye Kung during a casual dialogue session with participants of the 17th Malaysia Journalists Visit Programme (MJVP) organised by the Singapore Ministry of Communications and Digital Development (MDDI).
3 medical schools set up in S’pore
At the event, Ong said that Singapore currently has three medical schools, with the National University of Singapore (NUS) being the first, but it was unable to produce sufficient doctors.
A graduate medical school, a DukeNUS collaboration, was later established and it followed by the third medical school with Imperial College at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Ong said all three medical schools produced a total of 550 doctors each year.
M’sian doctors under Singapore’s radar
Despite the existence of these medical schools, Ong said it still wasn’t enough to meet Singapore’s healthcare needs, causing the republic to look beyond its borders for additional manpower.
“In addition, many Singaporeans who are not able to get into local medical schools study in overseas medical schools. We want them to come back to serve. So by and large, we rely on our own production of doctors.
That said, from time to time, we do recruit overseas doctors, from all sources. We have some from the United Kingdom, some from India, some from Malaysia, and they make up a small proportion of our total,” he said as quoted by NST.
Previously, it was reported that there was an ongoing effort from Singapore in recruiting Malaysian specialist doctors and nurses.
However, health minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad told Parliament that Singapore denied the claims, with Ong saying it was the work of private agencies.
“He (Ong) himself mentioned this to me and expressed regret. Therefore, we will hold further engagement and I want this matter to be followed up because this is not the first time I have taken action,” said Dzulkefly.
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