The Galen Centre for Health & Social Policy

14/11/2025

Inspiring!

In 1974, she became one of the region’s earliest Muslim trans women to undergo gender-affirming surgery.

(Link in comments)

23/10/2025

The Malaysian Pharmacists Society (MPS) agrees vaccination is a clinical act, not retail, but says trained pharmacists should be allowed to vaccinate adults under the same safety standards as doctors, to expand access without compromising patient safety.

21/10/2025

Shout out to Kuching folks! 👋

PhAMA is excited to bring MyMediSAFE to the Borneo Cultures Museum this 25 October (Saturday) in conjunction with PhAMA Career Day 2025!

Got unused or expired medicines at home? Drop them off at our booth and you will receive a voucher to redeem a Vitamin D test for ONLY RM1 at Alpro Pharmacy (open to the Career Day participants and public, while stocks last!)

📍 Outside Auditorium, Borneo Cultures Museum, Kuching
📅 25 October 2025 (Saturday)
🕘 9:30am - 5:00pm

Let’s protect our homes, our community, and our environment through safe medicine disposal. See you there! 🌱💊

Visit www.mymedisafe.org.my for more info and for nearest disposal collection point.

21/10/2025

17/10/2025

The RESET strategy, a coordinated reform framework to overhaul the private healthcare system and curb soaring medical inflation, and announced in June by Bank Negara Malaysia needs a serious rethink and might itself need a revamp.

The country’s double digit medical inflation rate is among the highest in the Asia-Pacific region.

Reform is certainly needed as medical inflation, which has gone unchecked for years and is currently estimated to be at least 15.6% and as high as 18%, continues to erode affordability and access, especially to private healthcare services. In comparison, Malaysia’s headline inflation only averaged 1.4% for the first seven months of 2025.

The direction and intent are good and right. Yet, RESET faces at least six shortfalls that could blunt its impact on medical inflation, or even cause it to fail in ex*****on

It faces at least six shortfalls.

17/10/2025

The Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy acknowledges the recent statements by the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (KPKM) regarding the Suku-Suku-Separuh (SSS) healthy plate model.

The MOH has warned that SSS risks becoming a “privilege for the few” if affordability is not addressed.

The Agriculture Minister has stated that the affordability of SSS is a nutrition‐and‐public-health strategy, not primarily due to local food supply issues.

“”We believe the Suku-Suku-Separuh model remains a sound and necessary guide in the fight against malnutrition, obesity, and non-communicable diseases, ” emphasised Azrul Mohd Khalib, Chief Executive of the Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy.

“However, based on evidence, its promise will go unfulfilled unless affordability and access are addressed directly.”

If supply chain constraints and costs are not addressed, food, will remain expensive

17/10/2025

The Galen Centre for Health & Social Policy calls upon the Madani Government to make bold reforms and increased investments for three critical actions: financing health and aged care; removal of sugar subsidies; and increasing on-call allowances for doctors and dentists.

“It is inadequate and unsustainable to expect or depend on increases in the yearly allocation for health under the government federal budget. It is tax funded. At the current growth rate, assuming consistent political commitment, it would take at least 10 years to reach the desired 5% of today’s GDP levels,” said Azrul Mohd Khalib, Chief Executive Officer of the Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy.

“The question “How do we pay for it?” should rightly be on the minds of decision and policy makers whenever more funding is demanded. Future-proofing our health system must involve answering this question realistically.”

Our health system must be future-proofed.

17/10/2025

The health allocation under the Federal Budget 2026 tabled in Parliament by the Finance Minister today sets an encouraging direction in key areas, particularly modernising of physical infrastructure and improving human resources.

However, it falls short in several areas, namely aged care, sugar subsidies, primary care, to***co, and healthcare financing reforms.

“We continue to recommend to the Government that the best way forward is to introduce national health and social insurance. The pooling of funds will go towards investing in both health and aged care. Such a scheme could potentially raise an additional RM 6 billion which will complement the existing annual budgetary allocation.”

“In order to ensure that Malaysia’s healthcare system is able to be sustainable and continue to provide quality, affordable and accessible universal health services for decades to come and tackle the NCD crisis, and support an aging population, the government must be bold to invest in a resilient approach to funding health. Unfortunately, we did not hear that commitment today and have kicked the can down the road once again.”

“We need to invest in future-proofing and increasing the resilience and sustainability of the public healthcare system. We cannot expect someone else to do it for us.”

Health is 9.9 percent of the Federal Budget 2026.

17/10/2025

Thank you for taking up this recommendation, YB Sim Tze Tzin 沈志勤!

We support the establishment of the independent private healthcare commission to protect Malaysian consumers by regulating private hospital charges and private medical and health insurance/takaful (MHIT) products.

The commission should act as a consumer protection body to:

- Regulate hospital charges beyond consultant and procedure fees, including integrating diagnosis-related group (DRG) to regulate consumables, devices, diagnostic tests, facility and ancillary charges; require standardised, itemised billing and price transparency; and investigate overcharging and fraud.

- Review and decide on proposed premium rate increases and caps by insurers and takaful operators ; where increases are unjustified, excessive or unfairly discriminatory, require revision and public disclosure of findings. Introduce yearly caps for deductibles and co-payments.

- Harmonise regulation of private health insurance and takaful, with hospital pricing, including transferring part of insurance/takaful oversight from Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) to the new Commission so that premiums, benefits, and provider charges are overseen under one roof with a consumer-protection mandate.

- Publish an annual Private Healthcare Affordability Report tracking trends in medical inflation, premiums, out-of-pocket (OOP) spending, and provider charges by category, and recommend corrective actions to Parliament and the Government.

AN INDEPENDENT private healthcare commission should be established to tackle long-standing medical insurance problems, the Dewan Rakyat was told.

11/10/2025

28/09/2025

18/09/2025