About 200 surgical interventions have been postponed in order to allow medical services to migrate to Mater Dei Hospital, although 20 operations will still take place as planned because they will be performed by foreign doctors.

The new hospital is expected to take its first in-patients next month and, from November 5, operations not considered urgent will be stopped for a week to allow patients at St Luke's Hospital to recover and be discharged before wards are moved to Mater Dei Hospital.

However, two surgeons will be flying out from the UK to operate on scoliosis patients at the same time as the migration process in underway.

A spokesman for the new hospital said that considering the coordination needed to get foreign surgeons to Malta, it was decided to carry on with the operations performed by them during this period. Foreign surgeons visit Malta twice a year to operate on scoliosis patients, mainly teenagers.

Operations at the new hospital are expected to start gradually around the middle of the month when wards are moved to Mater Dei. Surgical operations have been suspended, just before the migration, in order to reduce to a minimum the number of in-patients who have to be moved from one hospital to another. However, a number of patients will still need to be transferred and the spokesman said this will take place in the morning hours.

He pointed out that the morning visiting time will be restricted during the migration of hospital wards, except in the case of paediatric and maternity wards and particular cases. This will be done to ease traffic and congestion around St Luke's Hospital.

The fact that the Outpatients Department - which caters for some 700 appointments daily - will already have been closed down, will help reduce traffic in the area.

About 1,500 letters have been sent to patients who have appointments between November 5 and 11, informing them that their appointment has been postponed. Appointments will start again from November 12.

The spokesman said efforts are being made for the postponed appointments to be rescheduled to the "near future". He added that 80 per cent of outpatient appointments were only moved by two weeks.

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