St Luke's Hospital

Recent news coming from and about St Luke's Hospital is good and heartening.

We are told that a study comparing the utilisation of the medical resources at St Luke's with those of a Dublin hospital compare very favourably. The general local feeling that St Luke's is a hive of medical activity of a very high order was in fact confirmed and one feels that any tinkering with bed management, as is being suggested by some, is unnecessary and potentially damaging.

The acute needs of a patient are better understood by an experienced clinician than by a hospital "bed manager", and he or she is more likely to find a hospital bed quickly and with less red tape if the referral is made solely to the clinician.

The other piece of good news is the visit of the cardiac-surgery team from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, to our university hospital, to help us with the surgical treatment of Maltese children with heart defects. The whole operation entails a close liaison between the two hospitals and is an example of our continuing meaningful cooperation with centres of medical excellence in the United Kingdom to the immense benefit of our people.

This history of cooperation goes back many years and we owe it to the vision of our medical leaders, some of whom, like Professor Craig are now dead, who fostered this spirit of collaboration, reciprocated so generously, by our counterparts in the UK.

The country is also indebted to our present team of consultants at St Luke's who, after periods of service and training in some of the medical centres mentioned above, have carried on and nurtured our ties with British medicine.