An elderly woman’s eyes follow the movement of strangers who constantly walk past her through the corridor at the hospital’s emergency department where she is being treated.
The strangers, some of whom are there to visit loved ones, feel the uncomfortable gaze of the patients as they lie on the beds, stretchers or wheelchairs that line the corridor at Mater Dei Hospital.
Some of the patients, most of them elderly, turn to face the wall and give their back to the passers by – an illusion of privacy. Their bags are tucked underneath their beds and poles support intravenous drips.
This is the situation at the hospital’s emergency department, as captured in video footage obtained by The Times.
The footage shows more than 20 patients lining the corridor near the department’s Area 2, known as the paediatric corridor, sources confirmed.
The corridor and Area 2 – where the second priority cases are meant to be treated – have been converted into a full-blown ward with a total of some 50 patients.
The state hospital has been plagued by bed shortages ever since it opened its doors four years ago.
The bed shortage has often led to patients being treated in corridors as wards get full. Last year, 7,500 people were treated in corridors. The situation gets worse in the cold winter months when flu and infections are common. Over the past weeks the government decided to add two or three beds in each of the 11 medical and surgical wards to try and tackle overcrowding.
However, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses objected, insisting that the rooms were not equipped to deal with more than one patient, and the government backtracked. It announced that only one extra bed would be put in as a temporary measure until a new ward is opened later on this year.
The Medical Association of Malta criticised this agreement and, on Wednesday, filed a judicial protest holding the hospital and health authorities responsible for any harm to patients’ health.
The doctors, who are responsible for patients, pointed out that the government had initially agreed to increase the number of beds in each ward from 24 to 26 or 27. As a result of the change of heart, a number of seriously ill patients were being left in corridors.
When contacted yesterday MUMN president Paul Pace said this was not a matter of “wards versus corridors”.
“It is ideal that we do not have patients in corridors... but the past four years have shown us that bursting the wards with patients does not remove patients from corridors,” he said.
The emergency department, the day surgery area and the paediatric day care area were packed with patients. The only results were inefficient wards and overworked staff, he said. The union could not allow this to happen to the medical and surgical wards too.
A Health Ministry spokesman said it was monitoring the situation closely, saying this was a “particular circumstance”.
“In fact, in the first two weeks of February, 6,238 patients went to this department (an increase of 413 patients over the same period last year).
“We acknowledge the extra burden this brings to the various professionals at this department, and eventually the rest of the hospital... The new ward is in fact a new ward, which means that the administration needs to make sure that it has all the necessary amenities a ward entails,” he said.