Task force into doctor’s death welcome, but look into recommendations from previous report

I WELCOME the formation of the Special Task Force to investigate the death of the specialist serving in Sabah.

The Task Force is being led by a former top civil servant and members of the task force are prominent and influential individuals from society.

Notably, following the death of a house officer in Penang back on April 17, 2022, the Health Ministry immediately set up the Healthcare Work Culture Improvement Task Force (HWCITF). A comprehensive report was published and made available to public on August 2022.

I have a few questions for that. There are 11 recommendations put forward by HWCITF and

what has the Health Ministry done to those wonderful recommendations?

Was it followed? Or was it just a knee jerk reaction and then the findings swept under the carpet and business continues as usual?

Perhaps the current task force should find out more about this now that it is a good two years down the line and another death has occurred allegedly due to bullying again.

We are setting a task force for a reason.The task must be to force the bullying menace out of the system.

Otherwise, it just becomes a cliche to form a fancy task force everytime someone commits suicide in the Health Ministry.

Another thing of note is that, perhaps, there should be someone from within the system as part of the members of the task force or at least being given the role of watching brief. A representative from SCHOMOS, MMA will be perfect for that as this section of MMA has been championing the rights of government doctors for many decades.

Nonetheless, this decision by the Health Minister is timely.

The previous implementations and findings must be reviewed.

This issue must be systematically reviewed and holistically weeded out.

One death is one too many.

SENATOR DR RA LINGESHWARAN