LETTER | The amendments to the Medical Act 1971 (Act 50) are part of a major effort to integrate the medical fraternity of diverse backgrounds while maintaining healthy competition and cooperative relationships in the nation’s socioeconomic revival process. It is a vital move.

The amendments to the Medical Act have further clarified, reinstated and reinforced the powers and jurisdictions of the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) and Health Ministry within the principles of public administrative law to ensure quality public health and safeguard the public interest.

1. MMC was formed under Section 3 of the said Act to uphold the professionalism of “fully registered practitioners”.

The MMC is a licensing body with the authority, power and jurisdiction to decide the accreditation of any undergraduate to postgraduate education programmes, and licensing of any medical practitioners from the general practitioners to the specialists level.

The new amendments to the Act will reinstate and reinforce this principle by ensuring both the licensing and the accreditation powers are within the jurisdictions of the Health Ministry and MMC.

2. The latest amendments to the Act reinforce the principles of public administrative law.

The Higher Education Ministry and Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) not only do not have the jurisdiction to accredit both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and training programmes, it is a conflict of interest for the Higher Education Ministry to accredit its own medical education programmes.

Now, it is the MMC and Health Ministry’s jurisdiction and authority to accredit any undergraduate and postgraduate medical education and training programmes, and also to license any candidates with satisfactory academic qualifications and clinical training to practise as general practitioners or specialists.

3. There are other examples Malaysia can emulate, including the United Kingdom’s General Medical Council, which has both accreditation and licensing sub-committees overseeing the authority to accredit and recognise both undergraduate and postgraduate medical education programmes, and hold any licensing exams for both if necessary.

The Caribbean Island states also have a joint medical education accreditation authority - the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and Other Health Professions, empowered to determine and prescribe standards and to accredit programmes of medical, dental, veterinary and other health professions education.

The licensing for medical practitioners and other health professionals, on the other hand, still lies in the respective medical councils of individual Island states.

Therefore, it is within the principles of public administrative law that the power to accredit and license programmes lies solely in the MMC and Health Ministry.

4. Like any profession in the world, including architecture, engineering, accounting and so on, the Higher Education Ministry and MQA do not have the specific expertise, jurisdictions and authority to determine the medical education programmes’ accreditation and licensing of the medical profession.

In addition, all public university and private university graduates should be assessed by a joint inter-collegiate licensing examination for both undergraduate and postgraduate candidates.

MMC and the ministry in the future should consider forming the Royal Academies of Family Medicine, Internal Medicine and Child Health, Surgery, and Obstetrics and Gynaecology for joint assessment of locally trained specialists in collaboration with other advanced countries and try to get mutual recognition.

This would ease the exchange of expertise and knowledge in the future and upgrade Malaysia to be an international hub for medical education and research.

DR BOO CHENG HAU is a practising physician and was a two-term Skudai assemblyperson.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.