UPDATED: 5,544 await cataract operation
909 more operations held than last year
It was unacceptable that 5,544 people were awaiting a cataract operation, with the waiting list at Mater Dei Hospital stretching for four-and-a-half years, the MLP said today.
The party’s social affairs spokesman, Michael Farrugia, and Tony Agius Decelis, spokesman for the elderly, insisted that the waiting time for non-urgent operations needed to be rolled back to not more than six months.
They said that despite election promises that waiting lists would be cut, no real progress in this direction was being seen.
Many of those waiting for cataract operations were elderly people and such a delay was not only undermining their quality of living, but it could also prove dangerous because of their limited vision.
In its reaction, the Health Ministry said that 23,867 operations were carried out at Mater Dei Hospital in the first eight months of this year - 909 more than in the same period last year. 797 of them were cataract operations.
It said that the government, which was committed to giving the people the best health service, had placed the waiting lists problem on the top of its agenda. It said it would be interesting to know what the Labour Party’s solutions to the problem were.