Nurses' industrial action affecting 240 patients every day

The industrial action currently being taken by the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses is, every day, affecting 240 patients who are unable to have samples of their blood taken at health centres for testing, Parliamentary Secretary Joseph Cassar said this afternoon.

The MUMN has ordered nurses to refuse non-nursing duty as it presses the government to recruit more nurses.

Describing the action as unjust, Dr Cassar said the MUMN knew that the government was committed to employing more nurses but nurses were not hatched and they had to be graduates.

He said the government wanted to engage more nurses so that it could also make better use of operating theatres. Although 122 nurses were employed by the Health Department this year, their number was still not enough to meet the ever increasing demand for surgery.

Referring to statements by Labour leader Joseph Muscat, Dr Cassar said that the government had decided to build a new oncology centre at Mater Dei Hospital, instead of moving the current one from Boffa to Zammit Clapp Hospitals ,as part of a revision of the Health Department’s capital projects.

The revision was meant to ensure that decisions were taken responsibly; that they were financially sustainable and centred on patients. It made clinical sense to have this new centre in the vicinity of a general hospital because many of the services required by patients were already provided at Mater Dei.

The government was also exploring the possibility of having this centre co-funded by the EU.

On waiting lists for operations, Dr Cassar admitted that they were too long in certain sectors. He said creativity was needed to solve this problem. Plans were being prepared for three new operating theatres to start being used to increase the number of ophthalmic and orthopaedic operations, where the lists were longest.

The Parliamentary Secretary said that the Foundation for Medical Services together with the University, was carrying out an energy audit at Mater Dei Hospital to implement alternative energy solutions.

On breast screening, Dr Cassar said that the government was preparing for the implementation of the programme. It wanted screening to be based in the community.In the first nine months of this year 3,616 mammograms were carried out - 500 more than last year.

To help the fight against cancer, the government was also investing in a €2m PET scanner to be mostly financed by the Swiss government. The government was also seeing how it could also invest in a cyclotron facility, which produced the chemical used in this scan.

He said that besides Herceptin, the government was also seeing how it could provide new and more effective medicines for rarer forms of cancer.

The process for the procurement of medicines was also being reformed to increase efficiency, transparency and value for money, Dr Cassar said.