Every thing in Sabah is urgent!

Yes, we need more hospitals in and around Kota Kinabalu (K. K.) area.

Being a State capital, we must have the best hospital in K. K. handling all the elevated medical cases throughout the state, not mentioning that currently the Queen Elizabeth hospital (QEH) is also taking care of the needs of Labuan F.T., and Lawas & Miri from Sarawak.

Money for QEH should be readily available for the Twin Tower block that will provide 400 more beds!

Building more hospitals or upgrading the services in the surrounding areas such as Penampang and Papar districts should be placed as high priority in the government's development agenda in view of the background that the present infrastructure and services had not been matched with the development pace of Kota Kinabalu in the past 20 years.

The 'sudden' lost of the main tower block of QEH in November, 2008 virtually 'crippled' the medical services of the state, however, the situation turned slightly better with the facility then 'acquired' from Sabah Medical Centre; and subsequently, the purchase of the entire SMC building which is now renamed as Hospital Queen Elizabeth II.

The 'immediate' available of additional general hospitals in the near K.K. area such as Kinarut, or Penampang, or Bukit Padang, should relieve the growing pressure of QEH which should now focus more on the 'specialist' cases, or higher level of medical services.

The 10th Malaysia Plan however will start only from January, 2011 which is about 10 months away. In view of the urgency in Sabah, the government led by PM Najib, shouldn't wait for the
10th Malaysia Plan to implement; as these hospitals and medical facilities should have had been in place years ago.

Apart from the hardware, the medical services just like any other services in the state, suffers from the manpower problem, that it's also equally urgent to be resolved immediately; otherwise, the problems remain.