Health Ministry to offer annual scholarships for anaesthesiology

To address the shortage of specialist doctors in anaesthesiology, the Malaysian Health Ministry  will annually offer 84 scholarships starting next year for doctors keen in anaesthesiology.

Currently the anaesthesiologist to patient ratio is 1:45,000. The ministry, with the help of this programme, hopes to improve it to 1:30,000 by 2030.

"We are definitely short of anaesthesiologists in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care because the ratio in Malaysia is 1:45,000 while the benchmark for a developed nation is 1:10,000,," said Deputy Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Hilmi Yahaya.