Federal, state health ministries to work together

KOTA KINABALU: The Federal Ministry of Health is planning to work together with the State Ministry of Health and People’s Well-being to improve health facilities in Sabah.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said previous meetings with the late State Health Minister, Datuk Stephen Wong had been made and they had worked together on the matter.

He was speaking after the closing ceremony of the Sixth National Perioperative Mortality Review (POMR) conference 2019 at Hilton Hotel here yesterday.

The event, which was held on April 4-7, marked the 27 years of the initiative and carried a theme of POMR: A New Dimension, which was related to a reportvisioning universal access to safe, affordable surgical and anaesthesia care when needed.

POMR was started in 1992 as a national audit programme by the surgeons and anaesthetist who had worked in the Ministry of Health.

It is a peer-reviewed clinical audit conducted by a group of surgeons and anaesthetists who are experts in their field to review the mortality cases that occur before, during or after any surgical procedures in Ministry of Health hospitals.

The Ministry of Health has started to monitor Perioperative Mortality cases since 1992 and the reporting rate of Perioperative Mortality has increased exponentially to more than 73% nationwide in 2018 as the result of intensive training on the reporting system and the Malaysia Perioperative Mortality rate is less than 0.5%.

Perioperative Mortality Rate has become one of the six indicators in the safety and quality aspect in monitoring the surgical and anaesthesia care of the patients.

The POMR was also a part of the Ministry of Health’s continuous efforts to ensure increase in accessibility of surgical and anaesthetic care, and at the same time reducing the surgical complications, morbidity and mortality.

During the four-day conference, distinguished speakers with vast experience and expertise in their own field from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education were successfully gathered as well as more than 500 participants throughout Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.

The Ministry of Health has always been committed in improving the safety and quality of healthcare services throughout the country. Preventing mortality of the patients who undergo operating procedure is its mainstay priority in POMR.

Also present at the conference were Sabah State Health Department director, Datuk Dr Christina Rundi and the National Committee chairman, Dato’ Dr Wan Khamizar Wan Khazim.