Editorial

At times it is vital that babies are flown to the UK for urgent medical treatment not available here. Due to their precarious medical condition, they have to be ferried in an incubator.

The 10-year-old incubator which had, until recently, been in use is no longer compliant with aviation standards and a new one was purchased in August 2006 at a cost of over €33,600 (Lm14,424). Unbelievably, it was reported that it was still being subjected to a trial run by Health Department and Air Malta officials earlier this month!

A Health Division spokesman said the incubator could not be used earlier mainly because a method of securing the equipment to the aircraft's floor still had to be found. This is contested by Air Malta insisting the problem had been solved last May.

The airline explained it had invested thousands of liri in a removable protective bulkhead that brought the incubator in line with European air safety regulations. It also complained that the old incubator was only approved for road transport and that its engineers had to secure the old equipment to the seats, a practice not in line with standards. The airline had told the Health Division in May such a method should not be used except in emergencies.

However, although the new incubator was approved by Air Malta's engineering department last May, medical staff again used the old one in July, leading to a flight delay of about an hour as technical adjustments had to be made. To compound matters further, Paul Soler, the president of the Maltese Paediatric Association, pointed out that his association had not even been consulted on the matter.

Worse still, Dr Soler says there are serious reservations about the reliability of the new incubator as it does not have enough oxygen for the journey from the local hospital to the one in Britain. This argument is rebutted by the health authorities who say that, with a five-hour supply, there should be no problem when one takes into consideration that a flight from Malta to Gatwick is only three hours long.

The whole saga demands an explanation.

One would have expected the Health Division, Air Malta and the Paediatric Association to get together before the procurement of the new incubator and that all difficulties would have been ironed out.

What is the point of procuring equipment in August 2006 when it had to take nine months for Air Malta to make the necessary structural arrangements to their aircraft at an untold cost to the taxpayer? Even then, the new incubator was still not operational.

Six months down the line, the Health Division, Air Malta and the pediatricians are still wrangling over the issue. This smacks of comic opera were it not for the fact that such serious issues are at stake.

Here we are dealing with the safety of young patients, acceptable airline standards and cooperation of all the personnel who have the responsibility to ensure that such delicate operations are carried out without a hitch. We are also dealing with accountability. This can, literally, be a matter of life or death.

Such a situation reflects very poorly on the standards of planning and dialogue when executing what should have been a rather trouble-free procedure.

One hopes that lessons will be drawn and that, in the future, the handling of such procedures will be carried out with efficiency and transparency so as to safeguard the interests of all concerned.