MIMPA members attended a meeting with the Director General of Health, Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah at the Ministry of Health in Putrajaya on 13th January 2014. The Director General took time in his busy schedule to meet with the MIMPA members. The objective of the meeting was to introduce the four month old NGO to Datuk Dr Noor Hisham in order to brief him of the association’s vision, mission and future plans.
The meeting began with a brief and concise presentation by MIMPA President Dr Dhesi Baha Raja, which outlined MIMPA’s objective of “Community Empowerment Through Innovative Capacity Building”. The esteemed DG was also updated regarding MIMPA’s education and humanitarian endevours since it’s recent establishment.
MIMPA’s flagship online project The Malaysian Medical Gazette (MMG) has garnered 140,000 views since its official online launching by the DG himself. Publishing 24 articles per month, the online gazette has published over 105 articles on various topics from a variety of specialities. Datuk Dr Noor Hisham agreed that social media plays a pivotal role in community empowerment in this era where information is easily accessed.
“Knowledge is no longer power, understanding is power”, he said as he congratulated MIMPA on their efforts in using MMG to help the public gain access to reliable and relevant medical and health information. Understanding can be fostered via “Engagement”: sincere engagement with the patient; “Explanation”: explaining to the patient using facts and evidence and “Expectations”: managing the expectations of each patient realistically.
Datuk Dr Noor Hisham also explained that we should all work towards better health, driven by quality & accessibility of care as outlined in the 1Care plan & Blue Ocean initiative. He impressed upon the MIMPA members the importance of having a clear intention and focusing on quality professionalism in maintaining the altruistic nature of the association.
MIMPA would like to sincerely thank the Director General of Health, Datuk Dr Noor Hisham, for his willingness to meet with us and his invaluable insight and advice. We hope that MIMPA and the Ministry of Health will continue to foster a strong bond of friendship and collaboration in ensuring quality of care to the Malaysian community.