Sant promises a healthy health sector

Labour leader Alfred Sant this morning insisted that a Labour government would give new life to health centres and also reduce waiting lists for operations by 15 percent per year.

He told a press conference outside the Gzira health centre that a Labour government would introduce an electronic patients record system to ease problems at the hospital outpatients’ department. A process would be launched for outpatients’ appointments not to be go beyond one month.

There would be fresh investment in health centres and more community services would be introduced. The health centres, he said, represented a government failure. Spending on them had fallen drastically under the present government, he said, and the temporary restriction in the opening hours of three health centres had now lasted years.

At the hospital, he added, the new hospital was equipped with more operating theatres than the old one, but because of a manpower shortage which the government had not successfully tackled, the number of operations had not risen.

Dr Sant said St’ Luke’s Hospital would be rehabilitated to serve as a residence for persons with disability and for social cases until new facilities for social cases at St Vincent de Paule were ready.

Labour, he added, would introduce a serious breast screening programme for women at high risk of breast cancer and it would strengthen the Pharmacy of Your Choice Scheme, which, he said, Labour started working on in 1998.

Dr Sant promised that health services would be free under Labour and said that in 2004 the Cabinet had considered whether to introduce charges on some health services.