Johor will see the completion of Hospital Sultanah Aminah 2 (HSA 2) soon as Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the federal government is expected to approve the construction of it. The matter would be tabled in the Budget 2023 this coming October.
The construction of HSA 2 is said to be able to accommodate 350 beds and equipped with state-of-the-art facilities to improve health services capacity in the state.
Meanwhile, the Pasir Gudang Hospital is currently under construction at a 40% completion rate and is expected to be completed by November 2024.
“The construction of two new hospitals in Pasir Gudang and Kempas is expected to help overcome patient congestion at the current Hospital Sultanah Aminah (HSA) and Hospital Sultan Ismail (HSI).
“These two new hospitals will be equipped with more than 700 new beds to cover the utilisation capacity in Johor Bahru city and nearby areas.
“We need this investment to ensure better health care. We will also monitor to ensure that the project does not experience delays,” Khairy reportedly said after the launching ceremony of the Johor state-level Healthy Malaysia National Agenda Tour (ANMS) in Bandar Dato Onn.
Khairy also mentioned the estimated number of people living in Johor Bahru who uses the services of specialist doctors at the hospitals in the city is about two million people, excluding cases referred to hospitals in Johor Bahru that came from other districts as well.
“Therefore, we need this investment for better health services in the state as at present there is approximately 90% occupancy rate at HSA and HSI, and this figure is quite high for a public hospital,” he said.
Khairy said one of the initiatives, which is the National Health Screening Initiative, is expected to drive the culture of self-assessed health for Malaysians.
He calls for the state government to also help ensure that eligible individuals do health screenings as an effort to detect non-communicable diseases (NCDs) earlier, thus allowing them to be monitored by the District Health Office.
At least 130,000 citizens of the state are targeted to undergo the health screening which is held free of charge since it was launched last July.
Johor Menteri Besar, Datuk Onn Hafiz who was also present during the ANMIS launch stated that Khairy has also approved several ambulance van units to launch more operations at Mersing Hospital and assured that the upgrading works at the Bukit Pasir Health Clinic, Muar will be included in the main list of the Third Rolling Plan, under the 12th Malaysia Plan (RMK-12) to support the increasing number of patients.
“Although the state’s health sector will continue to be strengthened, I would like to call on the people of Johor to continue to take care of their own health. Healthy citizens not only can save on health expenses but would also ease the operational burden borne by the public health system.
“Therefore, practice a healthy lifestyle and do regular health screenings. Don’t be afraid to find out if you have any health problems, because prevention is better than cure,” he said.
Also present were the Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, Johor State Health and Unity Committee chairman, Ling Tian Soon and Johor State Health Department Director, Dr Aman Rabu.
