BY LOH FOON FONG
PETALING JAYA: The Health Ministry has denied that it has stopped giving subsidy for haemodialysis treatment to poor patients seeking treatment at NGO-run centres.
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the rejected and pending cases were mainly due to incomplete supporting documents relating to socio-economic status or that the NGO or private centre had not been approved by the ministry.
“The Government has never stopped providing subsidy for haemodialysis treatment and injections provided by the NGOs,” he said in response to The Star’s front-page story on Thursday highlighting the plight of haemodialysis patients who said they had not received approvals for government subsidy.
NGO centres said that the problem became acute from mid-last year. They claimed that approvals were negligible this year and some had not been approved since 2011.
Dr Noor Hisham said that each year the Government spends RM31mil on dialysis treatment and Erythropoietin injection subsidies at RM1,040 per month or RM12,480 a year for each patient.
This year, the ministry received 458 subsidy applications; 141 were approved, 81 rejected and 236 pending approval, compared with a total of 824 applications last year when 488 of them were approved, 102 rejected and 234 still pend-ing.
In 2011, of the 954 applications, 730 applications were approved and 61 rejected.
Since 2001, the ministry had spent RM231.2mil in subsidy on haemodialysis patients and another RM41.6mil on Erythropoietin injection which has benefited 3,048 patients since 2009.
Dr Noor Hisham said that the ministry was reviewing the status of dialysis centres and might close down those that did not meet the standards to ensure patients’ safety.
“But before such action is taken, the ministry will take proactive measures to ensure the affected patients will continue to receive dialysis treatment at other licensed centres located near their house or at the ministry’s facilities,” he said.
He said that in view of the challenges arising from dialysis treatment as a form of renal replacement therapy, the ministry had moved towards Continuous Ambulatory Peritoneal Dialysis (CAPD) as the preferred choice of therapy.
Recently, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak announced that CAPD would be provided to about 1,000 patients beginning next year.
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