Late Medical practitioner licensing issues leave doctors unlicensed, uninsured and patients unprotected
A catastrophic failure within the MMC unexplained
The delays in issuing 2026 doctors Annual Practising Certificates (APCs)by the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) leave thousands of doctors unlicensed and practicing medicine illegally in an uninsured situation. Although doctors have been told by the MMC to continue working while awaiting certificates, lawyers state this is illegal as the MMC has no legal authority to grant immunity to doctors as the Medical Act 1971 contains no such provisions. This is extremely dangerous to patients, who will not be able to make any complaints to the MMC over professional misconduct.
The MMC claims a late influx overwhelmed processing capacity, leading to backlogs. Additionally, many applications included supporting documents that were incomplete or received late, further contributing to the delays. However, Code Blue question this reason, arguing there should be enough IT capacity to cope with the workload.
This is a catastrophic situation where APCs for doctors in the national medical practitioner records system cannot cope. The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) has urged a review of MMC’s operations, including staffing adequacy and workload management, to address these systemic shortcomings. In response, the Health Minister Dr. Dzulkefly Ahmad has committed to upgrading the system and implementing reforms, potentially including multi-year certificates if needed. This is not enough, the medical council should have foreseen such issues and taken action before such problems occur. The MMC 33 member medical council have not performed their jobs.
Both the Health Minister and MMC must fully explain why there was such a major failure the APC system. This looks like sabotage or incompetence. The new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) Dr. Zakiah binti Mohd Said was only appointed to the position on December 22, 2025. In her capacity as CEO, she also serves as the Secretary of the Council. So, her predecessor is responsible or the system has been sabotaged by unknown people after he left. Any competent organisation would have a contingency and a back-up plan for complete system collapse like this. Medical practitioners and the public are owed a full explanation.
The minister Dr. Dzulkefly Ahmad has so far remained silent. The Director General and MMC President Dr. Mahathar bin Abd Wahab must take responsibility for this collapse in the national medical profession regulatory system.
Consequences of the lapse in APC issuance
The MMC only has disciplinary jurisdiction over registered medical practitioners.
If doctors are not registered, how could a patient bring a doctor to the MMC disciplinary committee under these circumstances when doctors are practicing without a certificate. A medical practitioner holding an APC is an absolute prerequisite for him/her to come under the disciplinary jurisdiction of the MMC.
A recent decision in the High Court upheld by the Appeal Court essentially ruled that the MMC are a law unto themselves and only doctors found guilty of gross professional misconduct have a right of appeal against disciplinary decisions. Patients and their loved ones cannot appeal if the MMC refuses to punish errant doctors, where the MMC legally has no jurisdiction over doctors without APCs.
Doctors will have a further defence because they can claim they were not registered during any claim of gross professional misconduct cannot be brought at all.
As of early 2025, Malaysia has a significant number of registered doctors, with reports indicating around 79,000 total doctors by 2022 and over 74,000 Annual Practising Certificates (APCs) issued in 2024, suggesting the total number is likely well over 75,000, potentially approaching 80,000+ by 2025/2026
This means that tens of thousands of doctors are affected and they are subject to the old regulations under the Medical Act 1971 which the Appeal Court ruled that doctors are not subject to appeal if there are problems
This applies to all doctors because the certificate is issued annually where each doctor must reapply every year so tens of thousands are now unregistered each treating possibly dozens of patients each day.
This exposes hundreds of thousands of Malaysians to unregistered doctors each day, with no guarantee of insurance cover or the possibility of legal protection if they are the victims of negligence or gross professional misconduct.
As each day, week and month passes the number of people exposed to medical risk approaches millions. This also affects medical tourists and foreign patients a business worth RM2.72 billion in revenue from 1.6 million healthcare travelers in 2024.
This incident also exposes long-term divisions between the MMA which has a governing board 70% Indian and represents doctors and the regulator MMC which has a governing board more than 70% Malay and represents the government. The voices of many medical practitioners today are ignored by the regulator.
The MMA have complained that MMC’s incompetence puts doctors and patients at risk. So far, the MMC has not responded to the risk to patients or doctors.
These concerns have been covered in media articles raising concerns about governance and incompetence in the MMC now we see that these were justified concerns. There was a long gap of time after the previous CEO Mohd Khairi bin Yakub departed from the position until the new CEO was appointed. The MMC was not managed by a CEO for a significant length of time. This appears to be the period where these problems occurred. Why was this allowed to happen? Instead, the MMC has made a strong effort to intimidate and silence doctors and journalists who criticize the regulatory body.