An agreement has been reached between the Health Ministry and the Queen Mary University of London to open a medical school in Malta in a bid to brand the island internationally within the medical sector.
The deal will mean the opening of a campus of the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, which is the medical and dental school of Queen Mary University.
The agreement was announced by Health Minister Godfrey Farrugia during a public consultation meeting held yesterday evening and chaired by former TV presenter John Bundy, at Mater Dei Hospital.
This was the second meeting in a series called Gvern li Jisma, launched six months after the first series of public meetings with ministers held at Castille.
The discussion was also broadcast live at the Gozo General Hospital. Dr Farrugia said that when he first visited this hospital, he discovered that for every employee at Mater Dei, there were 9.3 workers at the Gozitan hospital.
He also referred to the oncology centre which is being inaugurated at the Gozo Hospital today. This day care unit, he said, was previously going to cost €600,000 but the current ministry had managed to cut the cost down to €200,000.
Also today, an application for 2,400 tombs in an extension of the Addolorata cemetery will be submitted to the planning authority.
Referring to the voucher system, he noted that research on this system was under way, and once launched, it would be tailored to patients’ needs and improve access to services, so that, for example, a person from Luqa would not have to travel all the way to the Birkirkara health centre.
Dr Farrugia also spoke about services at the anticoagulant clinic. He said that more than 300 people went to MDH or health centres every day for blood tests, with the latter being given results three days later. All the patients will now be going to health centres and will be given the results immediately.
The minister also urged people to seek medical advice and make use of services at health centres – such as the X-ray machine available at the Mosta health centre around the clock – before calling at the hospital’s emergency department.
At the moment, 70 per cent of those going to the emergency department did not seek a doctor’s opinion beforehand, he said.
Referring to the current bed shortage at the hospital, he said that one of the main challenges was that some beds meant for acute treatment were being taken up by people who should be at Karen Grech Hospital, in residential homes or within the community.
As for beds at Mount Carmel Hospital, only 180 patients of the 400 who take up beds there actually required psychiatric help. The remaining 220 should be receiving treatment within the community, he said.
Meanwhile, within the past 10 months, the number of beds at MDH had been increased by more than 50, and last Saturday, a record of 167 people were discharged, freeing up more beds.
During the meeting, members of the audience also asked about the procurement of treatment for people with rare conditions, such as fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis. Fingolimod (tradename Gilenya), an oral treatment for the latter, would be added to the formulary list this April, Dr Farrugia said.