No request made by Malaysian Medical Council to reduce intake of medical students in public varsities

The Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) has just issued a statement to revoke Kamalanathan's previous claim that it has issued a directive to reduce intake of medical students.

Education Minister II Kamalanathan said that the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) requested for a lower intake to prevent the oversupply of doctors as there were housemen in hospitals with no work to do, as quoted by the New Straits Times. He added that 418 places were available for medical degree in public universities this year, compared with the 699 places last year, based on the recommendation of the MMC.

Democratic Action Party (DAP) vice-chairman Teresa Kok wants to know why Kamalanathan claimed that MMC directed a reduction be made and why only 418 places were allocated, well below the approved quota. According to her such drastic reduction won't be fair unless private medical schools were also instructed to do the same.

Currently, Malaysia has 34 medical schools of which 20 are private.

Last March, Kok raised a parliamentary question on the government's plans to address the issue of oversupply of doctors. The response she received from Health Minister Datuk Subramaniam did not include the reduction of medical places in public universities.

The MMC statement issued by its president Dr.Noor Hisham Abdullah states:

• "The Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) would like to clarify that all accredited medical schools in Malaysia have been given approval for a specific quota in terms of the number of students to be enrolled every academic year. The quota is determined by their teaching capacity, and takes into consideration among others the lecturers to student ratio, and also the students to hospital beds ratio to ensure that students get adequate clinical teaching.”
• "For the public medical schools in Malaysia, the total size of the approved quota is 1,550 student intake annually, and is distributed among the 11 Public Universities with 13 medical programmes.The approved quota was decided based on their ability to comply with the accreditation guidelines for medical programmes.

• MMC has never given any directive to any of the public universities/public medical schools to reduce their intake of the medical students. They are free to enroll the students in accordance with the quota approved for them, provided they are in compliance with the accreditation guidelines .
• “The issue of oversupply does not arise as long as the public universities comply with the approved quotas and the accreditation requirements, which is important in ensuring the quality of medical graduates so that patients are provided with safe and quality care.”