Health Department arrangements for voting day

On polling day, April 12, there will be no outpatients and physiotherapy clinics or any distribution of medicine to outpatients in hospitals, the Health Department said.

Moreover no visitors will be allowed in hospitals at any time except under specific circumstances, namely where the following persons are concerned:

¤ relatives of patients on the danger list;

¤ husbands of wives who gave birth on that day or are in labour;

¤ parents of children who are admitted in wards and the emergency department; and

¤ a single person accompanying an elderly person at the emergency department.

The Health Department has also announced arrangements with the Electoral Commission to ensure orderly voting by hospital patients.

According to the arrangements, the consultant physician responsible for a patient would indicate if the patient can go out of the hospital to vote, and if in the affirmative, whether the patient needed an ambulance or any other means of transport.

Patients may either use the facilities offered by the department or else use the transport provided by their relatives to the polling place and back to hospital.

When patients choose to use private transport, relatives should, before the voting day, obtain a written permit from the administrator of the hospital.

In cases where patients go out to vote against the advice of the consultant or refuse to accept his advice in regard to the means of transport to be used, the patient would be asked to sign a declaration accepting the responsibility for this decision. When doing so, the patient would be free to choose the means of transport.

Administrative arrangements are being made so that patients would be able to leave the voting document with the hospital authorities.

But patients are reminded to be in possession of the document when they go to vote.

Relatives of residents at St Vincent de Paul residence for the elderly who applied to help the residents go to vote, should collect their identification tags from the Electoral Office, Evans Building, Valletta, during office hours.