I refer to the Malaysiakini article Malaise in our public hospitals Pt 1 .

It was written in the above article that: ‘There are in total 23 units doing cardiac surgery in the private sector. One in Alor Star, four in Penang, one in Ipoh (apparently now defunct), nine in the Klang Valley, three in Malacca, one in JB, one in KK and one in Kuching’.

I would like to clarify that there are two cardiac surgeons in Ipoh. One at the Ipoh Specialist Hospital where I work, and Mr Chow Hom Keong at Pantai Putri.

We are both recognised and registered on the National Specialist Register as Cardiothoracic Surgeons.

At the Ipoh Specialist Hospital, we have four adult cardiologists, one fully trained paediatric interventional cardiologist, Dr. Liew San Foi, and one cardiothoracic surgeon.

We do the full range of adult cardiac cases including aortic aneurysm repair. Of course, we do not do transplantation.

We also have paediatric cardiology intervention like coiling of PDA, balloon dilatation and closure of ASD with Amplatzer etc. We also do non-complex paediatric cases like ASD, VSD, PDA etc.

We have done100 open heart cases a year since 2000 and have performed close to one thousand cases now. So we are active and not ‘defunct’.