IN January this year, Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam was reported in the media as saying that his Ministry was in talks with the Education Ministry to tighten the admission requirements into medical schools in the country.

An online news portal reported that the Minister also said, "We are not going to allow (the opening of) new medical schools, neither are we going to allow them to increase the intake in any of the existing schools."

We warmly welcome the Minister's statements. For decades now, medical practitioners have raised concerns about an oversupply of poorly trained medical graduates in the country. There are also many anecdotal stories, ranging from funny to horrifying, which seemed to support the fraternity's alarm.

As such, we firmly advocate that the Health and Education Ministries work swiftly to address the matter which has snowballed into a national healthcare issue.

There are various reasons which led us into this quagmire. Firstly, there are too many medical colleges. At the last count, there were 33 public and private medical schools offering 49 programmes in Malaysia. On top of this, we recognised 378 institutions in over 35 countries.

Secondly, while the government acknowledged that the growing number of medical programmes was a problem and imposed a five year moratorium in 2005, and then again, in 2010 - the number of graduates continued to burgeon. As such, if there is to be another round of moratorium, it must be strictly implemented.

Thirdly, the existence of many medical colleges have led to an exponential growth in the number of medical graduates. If Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) member, Dr Milton Lum's predictions are right, the country would be looking at 5,000 to 6,000 graduates in 2015-2016, a marked increase from 3,100 in 2011 and less than 1,000 in 2001. This number is expected to rise, and rise.

The medical fraternity have also cited several reasons for the glut. Amongst others, these included slack admission criteria for some of the local and international medical colleges, commercialization of medical education, as well as the lack of qualified medical educators in these institutions.

Dr Lum said that even as far back as 2007, consultants in teaching hospitals such as University Hospital, Hospital UKM, Hospital USM have raised the alarm about the patchy quality of housemen. This saw MMC extending the tenure of the housemanship from one to two years in 2008.

The oversupply of medical graduates have also resulted in another problem; the quality of housemanship training, a critical component in their professional career.

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Common licensing exam for medical grads