Friday, 20-Feb-2004 3:08 PM

Dr Jeya introduces telemedicine to Malaysia

Dr Jeyaindran Sinnadurai, the government doctor designated to attend to Anwar Ibrahim, is the first Malaysian doctor to practice telemedicine. When told a couple of days ago over the telephone that Anwar was in excruciating pain, aggravated by his very bad cough, he prescribed antibiotics and some other unknown medicine.

“Anwar’s cough is very bad,” said Saiful Hizam Ramli, one of Anwar’s lawyers who visited him in the Sungai Buloh Prison at around lunchtime today.

“Every time he coughs it makes his back pain worse.”

“We are worried that his pneumonia might have recurred because all the systems are similar to that when he caught pneumonia awhile back,” added Saiful.

The beautiful thing about Dr Jeya’s telemedicine is that he need not even see Anwar, whether face-to-face or through a PC video-cam. All the caller needs to do is to explain over the telephone what is wrong with Anwar and Dr Jeya will prescribe the medicine.

What medicine he prescribed for Anwar is not known. For all you know it could have been Viagra, which would be bad news for Anwar considering his almost immobile situation and the solitary confinement he is in.

The problem is, while Dr Jeya refuses to see Anwar, he also forbids any other doctor from seeing Anwar. He jealously guards his exclusivity over Anwar and refuses to “share” Anwar with any other doctor. So, if he does not want to see Anwar, then no other doctor can either.

Dr Jeya should franchise his new telemedicine technology. I am sure the amount of money he is going to make out of this franchise will be more than whatever Dr Mahathir or Daim is paying him to wreck Anwar’s health.