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.
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Charles Ebejer
May 15th 2009, 20:01
Mr. Bedingfield if you think that the serious Maltese voter is so gullible as to take notice of one single word you pronounce you are grossly mistaken. The same voters won't forget that you were in Mosta when you should have been in Brussels and you abstained from voting on matters of considerable importance to our country. Your latest utterances and those of the other Labour MEP's are bringing again into the open the anti European feelings kept under wraps up till now. This impressively meets the benchmark of disreputable behaviour of the MLP leadrers.
Hubert Theuma
May 15th 2009, 19:10
Patients' rights means also Patients' rights on its private medical data. At the moment EVERYBODY can get access the medical records. That means that an employer can check if someone has a chronically disease and not employ that someone. That means all insurances can gain access and deny to give the patient a private insurance.
By EU law our current status is just an simple ILLEGAL. Medical records have to be protected. Ideally encrypted with an electronic health card so that the patient has to open the file for the doctor!