SEPANG: Hospitals must inform the Health Ministry of any shortage of medical officers and not let doctors be overburdened, says Khairy Jamaluddin.

       The Health Minister said that hospital directors and department heads should not keep silent over any shortage of manpower.

       "Lack of manpower, including medical officers must be made known to the ministry's Human Resources Department so that we can do something about it," he told reporters on Tuesday (June 7).

       Khairy was commenting on a complaint by a medical officer who claimed his wife had to undertake on-call duty alone as her colleague had gone on maternity leave.

       The doctor had gone to the social media with his story and had tagged the minister.

       Khairy expressed his unhappiness with the matter.

       "This cannot be the only case. We can work on improving the work conditions of our medical officers if the Human Resources Department is informed of the situation," he added.

       Finding solutions to improve the working conditions of healthcare workers was among the tasks assigned to a recently set up task force.

       The Healthcare Work Culture Improvement Task Force was set up in May which, aside from the bullying incident in Penang Hospital, would look at work culture as well as human resources management, to ensure the delivery of quality and professional services.