Malta has “substantially” reversed the trend from losing 70 per cent of graduate doctors to not only getting over 90 per cent of them to stay but also receiving several applications from foreign doctors to come to specialise in Malta, Health Minister Joseph Cassar told Parliament yesterday.

He said the situation had been turned around by the establishment of a foundation course programme in Malta.

The minister also said the number of physiotherapists had doubled. He was answering a question by Labour MP George Vella for indications about the greatest shortages being faced by Malta in the medical field.

On another question by Dr Vella, about whether foreign doctors could be given a crash course in Maltese for the sake of better communication with patients, even though some Maltese doctors were speaking English to patients when they could easily speak Maltese, Dr Cassar said that usually it was the foreign doctors themselves who sought to learn some basic Maltese.

He said the government was ready to help linguistically if foreign doctors asked for such help, but he did not feel speaking Maltese should be made a condition for employment in view of the intense worldwide competition that Malta was facing to attract such doctors.

Earlier, Minister Cassar said that Malta’s biggest shortage in the medical field was of nurses, followed by pharmacists. Following an open call for applications issued last December, over 600 Maltese and foreigners had applied to be employed as staff nurses. Some 40 selected applicants from non-EU countries were now waiting for their visas.

The government had also issued a call for tenders for foreign agencies to supply nurses and pharmacists. It was also doing its best to entice young people to take up the medical professions.

Answering a parliamentary question by Stefan Buontempo (PL), Minister Cassar said there were currently 180 foreign members of the medical professions working in government hospitals.

The greatest numbers were of staff nurses (71) and resident specialists (51). All foreign workers came from both EU and non-EU countries.

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