DAP lawmaker Charles Santiago has urged that the registries for all major diseases be updated with immediate effect.
He said this includes HIV, cancer and hepatitis C.
Santiago, who is the MP for Klang, said the update would ensure the government can allocate adequate resources for healthcare.
He revealed that the registries are kept by individual doctors and the government is unaware of the severity of the problem.
“The ministry doesn’t know the extent of the problem. This is scary, very scary,” he said, adding that he had raised the matter in Parliament as well.
A check by Malaysiakini showed that the last publicly accessible cancer registry was published in 2007.
However, the National Cancer Patient Registry-Colorectal Cancer 2008-2013 is published on the Health Ministry's Clinical Research Centre website.
Santiago also urged the government to review intellectual property rights of medicines, especially for cancer treatment, to ensure it is affordable to most Malaysians.
At a conference in Kuala Lumpur last Friday, health practitioners and other stakeholders called for regulation of prices of medicine in the country.
He said this includes HIV, cancer and hepatitis C.
Santiago, who is the MP for Klang, said the update would ensure the government can allocate adequate resources for healthcare.
He revealed that the registries are kept by individual doctors and the government is unaware of the severity of the problem.
“The ministry doesn’t know the extent of the problem. This is scary, very scary,” he said, adding that he had raised the matter in Parliament as well.
A check by Malaysiakini showed that the last publicly accessible cancer registry was published in 2007.
However, the National Cancer Patient Registry-Colorectal Cancer 2008-2013 is published on the Health Ministry's Clinical Research Centre website.
Santiago also urged the government to review intellectual property rights of medicines, especially for cancer treatment, to ensure it is affordable to most Malaysians.
At a conference in Kuala Lumpur last Friday, health practitioners and other stakeholders called for regulation of prices of medicine in the country.
Santiago said the prices of medicines in Malaysia are more expensive than in other countries.
"This is becoming a serious problem as cancer is now the third biggest killer in Malaysia.
"We need to promote a new system of hardware centred on human rights," he had said in a Facebook posting after the conference.
The conference was organised by Santiago, policy think tank Monitoring Sustainability of Globalisation and German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
"This is becoming a serious problem as cancer is now the third biggest killer in Malaysia.
"We need to promote a new system of hardware centred on human rights," he had said in a Facebook posting after the conference.
The conference was organised by Santiago, policy think tank Monitoring Sustainability of Globalisation and German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
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