29th August 2009 bersamaan 9 Ramadan 1430H

YAB Dato' Sri Najib Tun Razak
Prime Minister of Malaysia
Jabatan Perdana Menteri
Aras 2, Blok B 8
Kompleks Jabatan Perdana Menteri
Pusat Pentadbiran Kerajaan Persekutuan
62502 Putrajaya.

YAB Dato' Sri Prime Minister,

GIVE US BACK OUR GENERAL HOSPITAL IN KOTA KINABALU

It has been 297 days now since the tower block at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Kota Kinabalu was shut down after it was declared unsafe.

We the people, Malaysians in the State of Sabah, who have elected our representatives in both the State Assembly and the Parliament, and who are angered by those who choose to ignore, obstruct or water down the health care challenges faced with no general hospital for the city of Kota Kinabalu that is so desperately needed, do hereby petition as follows:

"That the Federal Government immediately allocates the budget and start work on the reconstruction of the main tower block and expansion of the General Hospital, Kota Kinabalu."

QEH was first built in 1957 with 343 beds for a small population of 30,000 people. Before the closure of the main tower blocks in November 2008, it had a mere 589 beds for the 500,000 people of Kota Kinabalu. Most of those beds are now gone. Patients are made to suffer unnecessarily by being shuffled to outlying district hospitals as far as Beaufort, Kuala Penyu and Tuaran.

It is a stark irony that QEH is supposed to be the general hospital to take in patients in referral cases from district hospitals. In the last 300 days, it has been the other way round. Neither your Health Minister nor the State Government has any coherent plan; indulging instead in arguments over the feasibility of private hospitals. This is in spite of the fact that the authorities had known about the inevitable shut down of the main part of the general hospital well in advance. People are dying. Sick people and their families are made to endure further pain and suffering, and probably avoidable deaths.

But the government seems not to know what to do about such a basic service to the people. Almost 300 days after the main tower block shut down, there is still no solution. With due respect, this does not reflect well on the slogan "1Malaysia, People First, Delivery Now". KK City is the only city in Malaysia that has been denied a general hospital. People are made to wait in pain. Delivery is long, long overdue.

We hereby petition all these by our signatures below: