Patients' rights should be safeguarded - Bedingfield

Patients’ right to adequate and timely medical care should be safeguarded and the government must pool public and private resources to ascertain that no patient’s access to full medical treatment was denied.

Speaking at an Information Meeting at Marsa, Glenn Bedingfield dwelt on the grievous shortcomings of the National Health Service.

The country’s coffers, he said, had forked out an abundance of millions of euros as an investment on the health service and the people expected an adequate rate of return proportionate to that investment.

The actual state of the National Health Service was disastrous when one considered the scarcity of medicines that should be supplied free of charge within the national health scheme.

The government had also failed to fully implement the “pharmacy of your choice” and an ever-increasing numbers of patients were on waiting lists for medical or surgical interventions.

Rather than taking the bull by the horns to alleviate the hardship on Maltese patients brought about by the precarious situation, the government was introducing other issues to estrange the general public from the actual disastrous situation.

“The PN government is living up to the name of a barefaced liar especially by distorting the truth.”

The government had also issued false statements regarding his (Mr Bedingfield’s) voting in the EP on illegal immigration. Records show that he voted for the motion while the PN was still insinuating he voted against, he said.

The government, Mr Bedingfield said, should alleviate the undue hardships that patients and their families were facing. There should be utter condemnation for the government’s lack of commemoration of the European Day for Patients’ Rights.

He said that waiting lists could be eradicated if alternative measures were sought in other EU countries, safeguarding the right of every patient.

Rather than making promises which were broken overnight the PN government should see that the massive investment pumped into the health system yielded the desired fruit, he said.