PETALING JAYA (Dec 19, 2010): Doctors have a responsibility to practice good judgment and prudence in deciding whether to prolong the life of a terminally ill patient or to leave their families bankrupt.
The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) says this is the moral dilemma most medical practitioners are faced with.
Its president Dr David Quek was responding to theSun’s article on Dec 13 on budgetary constraints on life-saving treatment or medicines that can help prolong lives of patients.
“It’s not a matter of saving costs over lives, but about being prudent and making a decision in the interest of the public good.
“Patients already have to fork out a lot of money to pay for their treatment. If the government has to pay RM20,000 to RM30,000 more for an injection that may extend his or her life by two to three weeks wouldn’t the money be better spent on better causes?” he said.
Citing a recent example, Quek said he had personally been involved in the case of a patient who had lung cancer which had metastasised to the brain.
The patient suffered a stroke and became comatose.
He said the patient, who was a father of two young children, was in the ICU for one and a half months in critical condition.
“I was there because they asked me to look after his cardiomyopathy (deterioration of the heart muscle). One of the doctors recommended treating the tumour with Avastin, which is very expensive.
“The family had already spent so much on treatment and used up insurance claims of between RM50,000 and RM60,000 besides the cost of treatment.
“A few days later he succumbed to his condition and when the family went home they found they didn’t have enough money and couldn’t pay the bills.
“These are the things we have to consider – what happens to the family? We don’t want to create bankrupt families,” Quek said, adding that someone has to pay because there is no such thing as free medicines.
“We have finite resources and a finite budget so every healthcare practitioner has to practise good judgment and prudence.
“They may say I’m rationalising this unfairly but we have to be realistic and it is also for this reason that the MMA has been pushing for the establishment of a catastrophic fund which has to be reinsured and again, patients to benefit from it must be wisely chosen,” he said. -- theSun |
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