Almost half of the complaints received by the Health Ministry this year were about unfriendly hospital staff, said a Barisan Nasional member of parliament today.

BN MP for Sepang Seripah Noli Syed Hussin told the Dewan Rakyat that according to a recent hospital research on the level of hospital services provided by medical staff, 266 or 49.3 percent out of 540 complaints were about bad services by hospital staff.

She inquired if the ministry would take any action to enhance hospital care services.

In reply, the ministry's deputy minister, Suleiman Mohamed, refuted Seripah's allegations and said the latter has misconstrued the facts of the case.

"The figure 540 is too small compared with the number of patients who are admitted to hospital every year," he said.

"If we compare the number of outpatients and those admitted into wards with the number of complaints, we will see that the percentage of complaints received is only 0.0026 percent," he added.

Sensitive to problems

According to Suleiman, the number of outpatients was 19.4 million in 1997, rising to 27 million the following year and 28.3 million in 1999.

He added that the number of ward admittances was 1.56 million in 1997, dropping to 1.54 million the next year and increasing to 1.59 million in 1999.

Suleiman said the ministry was sensitive to the problems faced by hospitals.

He added that staff were frequently sent for training on customer relations, effective communication and responsibility towards patients under their care.

Last year, for instance, 19,931 hospital staff were sent for training and the year before that, 28,188 staff were similarly trained, he said.