In May 2011, the government imposed a moratorium due to the drastic increase of medical graduates. According to Health Minister S Subramanian, the ministry is working with the Education Ministry in preparing a cabinet memorandum seeking the extension. In addition, the two ministries are planning to tighten qualifications for entry into existing medical programmes. The current ban began in May 2011 and will expire on April 30 next year. The ban is applicable to existing medical programmes in Malaysia’s 10 public universities, 12 local private providers, foreign medical schools and Malaysians studying medicine at about 50 accredited foreign universities. The ban on new medical programmes is expected to continue for at least another five years. Currently, according to the Health Ministry, the ratio of newly qualified medical graduates to patients is 1:4, compared to 1:10 back in 2005. It is said that lack of exposure to patients would produce doctors who would be less prepared for the medical profession.

British Council commentary:

With the new moratorium on medical courses being implemented and estimated to be extended for another 5 years, and also further tightening of qualifications for entry into local existing medical courses, there might be direct impact on the number of students going for medical studies/programmes. Besides the moratorium, recently it is noted that there are many newly qualified doctors who quit because of the longer wait to be posted into government hospitals to do their internship to gain supervised practical experience, and about 1,000 of the 5,000 newly qualified medical graduates employed each year do not complete the two-year training stint. With the oversupply of medical graduates in the market, it is highly possible that this might affect the employability of medical graduates in Malaysia, and therefore most probably we might see reduction in number of students studying for medical programmes for in the near future.