IMO, government doctors ARE professional

I was a bit upset when I read this news item in Malaysiakini last week. It pertained to an allegation made in the Penang State Assembly by an UMNO opposition member that there were Chinese doctors at the government hospitals in Seberang Jaya and Kepala Batas who were not treating Malay patients fairly.

It just can't be true. A bumkum of a statement. Drivel. I had a first-hand experience of the professionalism displayed by the doctors at the Kepala Batas Hospital when my late aunt was sent there last May in critical condition. It was by fate that she ended there.

If anything at all, I have to commend the doctors there for their dedication attending to so many patients in the Critical and Non-Critical Wards. There were three doctors on shift work everyday at the Kepala Batas Hospital and I could see that they were overworked even on a Sunday. The line of walk-in patients was long and between attending to them, the resident doctor had to rush to check on the patients that were wheeled into the Critical Ward.

I don't even know how he managed to find the time for his dinner, for his shift started at 2p.m. and would presumably end at 10p.m. When I went back to the hospital the next morning at 11 o'clock, there he was back at work on another shift.

Although the patients were mostly Malays at the Kepala Batas Hospital and apart from my aunt, perhaps there were only three or four other Chinese or Indian patients there on that Sunday, the attending doctor saw them all and took the time to attend to them to the best of his ability. This is more service than one or two doctors I know in private hospitals who wouldn't care two hoots about their patients' welfare. But not this doctor in government service. Maybe it was only one doctor that I noticed but I was hanging around long enough in the Non-Critical Ward and at no time did I sense any unfair treatment as had been claimed in the State Assembly sitting.

Normally, I wouldn't like to mention names but in this case, I would like to thank this resident doctor, Yong Shin Shen, for the good work he had done at the Kepala Batas Hospital. It is people like him whose tireless work should be acknowledged, not criticised.