Don't Jail Doctors!

You are a legitimate doctor. You are nice to your patients and charge them minimal fees for the treatment. You have eight kids to feed. You are financially down and out. You are one of the GPs having hard time to make ends meet, despite the popular misconception that "all doctors are rich and glamorous".

In an occasion you decided to sell off your clinic, and hence you did not register the clinic under the Private Healthcare Facilities and Services Act 1998. You broke the law. You got caught, and you were sentenced to a 120,000-ringgit fine. You can't pay for that heft sum, so you were sentenced to a three-month prison sentence.

A doctor: At 2 pm today,I was at Kajang Prison to visit an old comrade in arms, Dr.Basmullah Yusuf who has been sentenced to 3 months prison for unable to pay the RM120,000 fine imposed onto him for failing to register his clinic under the new Private Health Act.Dr.Basmullah is a caring dr who charges minimum fees for his services especially when serving his poor pts.With the paltry fees that he gets and having to fend 8 children of his own the good man now has to pay a hefty price.Words cannot describe my feelings when I saw him dressed in his prison clothes trying to put on a brave front for the sake of his tearful wife and children.A good kind hearted dr is now being treated like a common criminal.After seeing the case first hand and on the advice of a lawyer in order to get him out he has to pay the absurd fine and appeal later.

Why the lack of negotiation? Why the heavy-handed action on a technical fault, when the doctor is a legitimate doctor who provides grass-roots medical care without pursuing monetary rewards?

He should tell MOH that he was the doctor who appeared to run the clinic, yet it was not him, but looked liked him.

Read more:
The 1st clinic doctor convicted under the PHFSA
The 1st clinic doctor convicted under the PHFSA (II)
Don't Jail Doctors Blog Campaign