MLP health plan 'lacks concrete measures'

Health Minister Louis Deguara has criticised the health plan published by the Labour Party, saying it stressed the negative aspects and distorted reality.

Dr Deguara said the document did outline challenges the health sector was facing but had either failed to say how they should be addressed or else drew "puerile" conclusions.

The present government was already implementing most measures which the MLP claimed it would implement once elected to government. He expressed surprise that after almost two decades on the opposition benches, Labour had produced a plan with few concrete measures and health statistics that were incorrect.

Launching a draft plan for the sector last week, the MLP said the patient should be at the centre of health. It called for an evaluation of hospital work practices by the authorities and stated that during the migration from St Luke's Hospital to Mater Dei Hospital, vacant beds at St Luke's should be used for patients who need rehabilitation.

The MLP also called for a system so that patients would not have to wait for longer than a month for an outpatient appointment.

Dr Deguara said that much of the MLP's proposals showed that the opposition shared the government's views on how the health sector should operate. For the first time, he said, the MLP had acknowledged that the sustainability of the health sector is being challenged, not just in Malta but also worldwide.

In its draft document, the MLP said Malta has 500 beds for every 100,000 of the population and that this was lower than the European average. But Dr Deguara said that recent Eurostat data contradicted this figure, showing that Malta has 687 per 100,000 - more than Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Italy, Denmark and others.

The minister said the opposition was still "monitoring" the problem of overcrowding at St Luke's Hospital and said it would reduce the operations waiting list by 15 per cent each year. It had however failed to say how it intended to do so, Dr Deguara said.

"A similar promise had been made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but £80 billion were budgeted for it. Could the opposition tell us where it would get the money from," the minister asked.

He explained that the government was tackling the overcrowding problem through its hospital migration plan whereby Boffa Hospital's oncology department will be transferred to Zammit Clapp, in St Julians, and the latter's rehabilitation services will start being provided from a new block at St Vincent De Paul Hospital.

Asked how the government was tackling the long waiting lists for operations, something that was often raised by the MLP, Dr Deguara said the solution was not simply a matter of injecting more money.

Helen D'Amato, Parliamentary Secretary for the Elderly, said most points mentioned in the MLP document were "matter of fact" for the government.

She said an issue that surfaced in the MLP document was the "vague" proposal to revise the way and the rate at which elderly people have been taxed since 1998. "This seems to have been a slip-up. Is it referring to the way in which the government provides its services to the elderly," she asked.

She said the document was made up of a series of promises that lacked concrete plans.