HEALTHCARE IN SARAWAK

Rural Health Centres

* Sarawak has 194 rural health clinics that function as "one-stop" family health centres
* provide an integrated service comprising
o maternal & child care
o general outpatient care
o environmental sanitation
* All clinics have rest beds and birthing facilities to encourage safe delivery among rural mothers* Community clinics are smaller versions of health centres and serve between 1,500 - 3,000 people.
* Except for a few larger clinics with medical officers, all rural health facilities are managed by allied health personnel

HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY SYSTEM
Hospitals
- 3 types of hospitals in the Sarawak
- The district hospitals without specialists , managed by medical officers.
district hospitals with specialists (previously known as divisional hospitals)
- The Sarawak General Hospital in Kuching

Polyclinics
- These are large urban clinics managed by medical officers.
- provide:
:general out-patient care,
:maternal and child care
:dental care.
:laboratory and
:radiological services.

Mobile Health Services
- in the form of Village Health Teams and Flying Doctor Service, to serve people in less accessible areas.
- These teams either travel by road, river, on foot or by helicopter, depending on the accessibility of the areas they serve.

Flying Doctor Service
- introduced in 1973
- provide basic health services to people living in remote areas.
- The service operates 3 helicopters that are rented under a contract with a private company.
- The helicopters are based in Kuching, Sibu and Miri and together, they cover 175 locations throughout the State with a population of about 70,000.
- The Flying Doctor team comprises a medical officer, a medical assistant and two community nurses
- visit tp locations once a month or once in two months.

Village Health Promoter Programme
- provide basic health care to these communities on a more continual basis.
- two volunteers from each participating village are given three weeks' training on a fairly wide-range of health-related topics.
- these volunteers give first aid,do health promotion, make blood slides for detection of malaria parasites and sputum slides for detection of tuberculosis,
give regular feedback on their activities
- regularly supervised by staff from the Sarawak Health Department.
- From 1981 -2001, there were 2,956 VHP throughout the State, serving a total of 271,182 people from 1,664 villages.

"Home-based" Health Records
- was introduced in the 1970's for the child-health card,
- the 1980's for the antenatal card and
- in 1992, for the outpatient card.
- it ensures continuity of care for the patient, especially in children, where immunisation records are concerned.

REFERENCE
http://www.sarawak.health.gov.my/about.htm