The quota for intake into NUS Medicine is kept extremely low
every year, making it notoriously difficult for local students to
get into Medicine (every year *thousands* of students with straight
As apply for the limited 200+ places), so much so that every year
thousands of Singaporean students have to spend many hundreds of
thousands of dollars (per student) to study Medicine overseas (the
fact that they suceeded qualifying into and graduating from foreign
Medical schools implies that at least most of these Singaporeans do
have the competence to practice medicine but were denied the
opportunity locally), while at the same time the government
declares Singapore is (and have been, for many years) suffering a
severe shortage of doctors, and are urgently inviting thousands of
foreign talent doctors into Singapore every year to practice
medicine here.
The following is a letter from Kojak, a concerned Singaporean
who has repeatedly and tirelessly voiced his concerns regarding
Singaporean matters of all kinds, to the authorities throughout the
years.
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from BT Kojak ([email protected])
to [email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]
date Sun, Jun 5, 2011 at 12:44 AM
subject Concerns over the qualifications of
foreign doctors practising in Singapore
mailed-by gmail.com
To:
Board of Directors
Singapore Medical Council
Singapore
Dear Sir(s),
I'm a member of the public. I would like to draw your attention
to the article published on Temasek Review:
http://www.temasekreview.com/2011/06/04/lee-wei-ling-27-percent-of-docs-at-nni-are-indians/
It has triggered much discussions among netizens with regard to
the quality of foreign doctors who are now being employed in large
numbers in our public hospitals and polyclinics. There are fears
that some of these foreign doctors may be entering Singapore with
fake degrees.
Following is a report in India of a CNN-IBN investigation
showing that many doctors working in Delhi’s top hospitals don’t
even hold real medical degrees:
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/mci-fallout-doctors-with-fake-medical-degrees/115384-3.html?from=tn
Also, CNN-IBN has reported high level of corruption inside the
Medical Council of India (MCI) involving its Chairman last year.
MCI is supposed to ensure that medical colleges in India offer
quality education and the doctors they produce are not below par.
However, many medical institutes were given accreditation by MCI in
exchange for money. MCI together with the some of the medical
colleges were also involved in selling study places to students who
wanted to take up medicine:
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/cbi-unravels-web-of-mci-corruption/114075-3.html
Such news does not give much confidence to the Singaporean public
that the foreign doctors in our public hospitals and polyclinics
are trustworthy. Already, at polyclinics or hospitals, some
Singaporean patients are rejecting seeing foreign doctors and
requesting to see Singaporean doctors instead. Also, read this
about a NSF's parents also questioning the quality of the foreign
doctor who was going to operate on their son:
http://www.temasekreview.com/2011/05/31/why-are-our-nsfs-serving-as-guinea-pigs-for-questionable-overseas-ft-doctors-to-operate/
I would like to stress that if we have even 1 single case of a
foreign doctor with fake degree granted a licence to practise in
Singapore by SMC, later resulting in the death of any Singaporean
patients, the public will surely be very angry with SMC and will
not hesitate to hold SMC responsible for such deaths. How can the
SMC assure the public that the foreign doctors are carefully vetted
by SMC before granting licence to them? How can the SMC guarantee
the public that no foreign doctors with fake degrees will be
allowed to practise in Singapore?
On a different note, I'm not sure if the Singapore medical
education is under the purview of SMC but many netizens are also
wondering why Singapore didn't train more doctors previously. If
our universities have trained more doctors locally in the past, we
won't be scrambling to get more foreign doctors now.
Appreciate if you can answer.
Yours sincerely,
Kojakbt