By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, Sept 2: Sarawak has submitted its health autonomy proposal to the Federal government where the State will manage its own health matters with funding from the latter.
This was revealed by Public Health, Housing and Local Government Minister Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian on his social media page, following his participation in the Health Policy Summit 2022 held in Kuala Lumpur recently.
“During the policy summit, we not only discussed about the State’s urgent needs, organisational and structural changes, but Sarawak has also put forward our own health autonomy (initiative), and what we need is the Federal government to give us the funding and we will manage it ourselves,” said Dr Sim.
He said Malaysia has been doing well using the same old model for more than half a decade.
But for the next 10 to 20 years, he said the demographic will change where Malaysia will need to deal with the issue of an ageing population.
It was also predicted by then, Malaysia will be the most unhealthy nation within the South-East Asia region.
These forecasts, he said, had caused Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin to call for a policy summit. — DayakDaily
