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Ras Adiba: Curiouser and curiouser

The Ras Adiba affair becomes curiouser and curiouser by the day. All she needed is to ascertain if a titanium plate imbedded in her boday, after an accident, to ease the pain was in place. That could easily be in Kuala Lumpur -- even Pantai Medical Centre, where she checked herself in under the care of not specialists, but her personal physician. She would not allow the PMC to release her medical records, she appealed for funds on her own, she decided she wanted to go to Sydney for what turns out to be a routine procedure available in the Klang Valley. The only specialists she consulted were a neurologist and a psychiatrist; no orthopaedic surgeon, either at the PMC or in the Klang Valley, was. The medical fraternity at the PMC are deeply troubled by what happened.

The PMC took a black eye it thoroughly deserved. It must take the blame for allowing it to be played out on its premises. The hospital, not the patient, which decides what he or she can do when in its care. The PWC should have stopped her and told her to get herself released and make the appeal elsewhere. It did not. Patients in private hospitals have much leeway unavailable in government hospitals. But that does not extend to what Ras Adiba did. Certainly not when it appeared to the uninformed public what she said was true since it had the unmitigated impramateur of the PMC. Especially when it is a scam. Acts of ommission and commission are equally culpable on such occasions.

Ras Adiba decided on the public appeal for the RM300,000 she plucked seemingly out of thin air. She, not the PMC, called the press, kept the PMC out and did not consent for it to reveal her medical condition to the press. Without it, the PMC could do nothing, with its specialists fearful of being struck off the medical register if they did. When the storm broke, the PMC CEO, a hospital administrator with no medical degree, issued a non-committal response. It did not help, only raised more doubts. Especially when even specialists and general medical practitioners at the PMC cannot even determine if she was paralysed when she was admitted.

She was first admitted four years ago for intractable spinal pain, after a motor accident while on duty for TV3, and referred to several pain specialists in the Klang Valley. A visiting Australian pain specialist, a former Malaysian, Dr Sundara Raj, also examined her and thought a spinal (implanted) nerve stimulator would help her. She got it done in Australia, which eased her pain much, her regular visits to the PMC Emergency Department for pain relief reduced to a trickle. Her pain worsened dramatically after she was assaulted about six months ago. She decided, or was possibly told, she could be helped only by those who implanted the stimulator in Sydney. Nearly RM400,000 was collected in days after the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Mahathir Mohamed, the deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and other VIPs called on her.

She left for Sydney so hurriedly within days, accompanied by her aunts and the director of the PMC's Emergency Department, Dr Ernest Yeoh, a pain (not spine) specialist as earlier reported, -- under whose care she was -- that an Australian High Commission official delivered her visa to her at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport within an hour of her departure. The mission, like most, is immune to such acts of service for non-citizens in the Third World or anywhere unless a higher imperative demands it. Was it asked to by some one up high it could not ignore? Who? Did it do so because the Australian foreign minister, Mr Alexander Downer, was to visit Malaysia shortly? Is Ras Adiba a permanent resident or citizen of Australia? And other questions that surely must be asked.

Doctors not directly involved in the Ras Adiba caper are appalled at how the PMC became involved in this larger scam to dupe the Malaysian public. They could not speak out, though the PMC could, without risking being struck off from the medical register for breaching patient-doctor confidentiality. With each revelation it seems it could not be possible without it being sanctioned from up high.

This is not the first, nor the last, of such scams. It was perpetrated deliberately and in the full knowledge that if it is found out it could be covered up. It came unstuck because the Malay is fed up with the UMNO-led government deciding, without cultural authority, on their behalf. Even the UMNO-owned and -controlled Utusan group of Malay newspapers are up in arms over this caper. The other daily newspapers have taken the Ras Adiba affair out of its coverage, after running daily reports of her condition in Australia. There are too many strands that boggles the mind: She sells her Proton for RM10,000 but keeps her RM70,000 Harley Davidson motorcycle -- a gift, she tells us, from a member of Johore royalty -- which she hopes to drive after her Australian caper. She would turn up, in happier times, for "teh tarik" at the Bangsar stalls in, I kid you not, a Porsche.

The minister for health, Dato' Chua Jui Meng, should inform Parliament, what happened. He was only too happy on another occasion that Malaysians be thoroughly briefed on why the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, should not be allowed to have his spinal problem and pain alleviated by a German doctor with no cost either to the public or to the government. All the more reason now when public donations have been so deliberately misused.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my