Thanks to a recent parliamentary question by the Labour Party, we now know one inalienable truth about the health care management of GonziPN. In the last year alone, 7,500 persons, fellow countrymen and women, were left, uncomfortable and robbed of their dignity in Mater Dei Hospital’s corridors. There they waited for the care that they rightfully expected to be given to them in a ward, managed by what many of us know to be and are among the best doctors and nurses in the world.
Corridors of care at Mater Dei have been transferred into corridors of shame- Marie-Louise Coleiro-Preca
Our nurses and doctors know that this serious problem has not been addressed by the government. Our nurses and our doctors had already faced this problem at St Luke’s Hospital where a shortage of beds was one of the reasons why we all fully and wholeheartedly supported the building of a new hospital. We continued to support the building of a new hospital even when expenses trebled, when there were many mysteries surrounding the costs of doors that led to nowhere and of an oncology ward that somehow disappeared, among many other issues.
It took 17 years to plan Mater Dei and, yet, the Nationalist Party inexplicably failed to increase the number of beds.
They should have done so. The Nationalist government was in duty bound to do so for a number of reasons.
To start with, the number of beds at St Luke’s was already insufficient.
Secondly, anyone with an ounce of brain power would have realised that once the shabby building of St Luke’s was replaced with a modern one, people who would otherwise have used the private sector would naturally be attracted to such a new place.
Thirdly, the challenges of an increasing number of elderly people and advances in medicine meant that the need for more beds was a certain requirement, anyway.
Yet, Lawrence Gonzi and his Health Minister, Joe Cassar, remain silent. This, in much the same way and in head-in-the-Maltese-sand style as when GonziPN ignored civil society’s protests on, among many other issues, a better alternative to heavy fuel oil to cater for our energy requirements and the need for both businesses and families to receive reasonable utility bills, and on the chaos wrought by Arriva.
Dr Cassar recently penned an article talking about health as the wealth of this nation. However, nowhere in the article, in those hundreds of empty words did Dr Cassar refer to patients in corridors – thousands of them – as a problem, as a challenge that he is prioritising. He mentions obesity and sexual health, both crucial challenges, we agree, but they have nothing to do with the crisis in hospital corridors.
This crisis was brought about not only by utter disregard to the basic tenets of health care planning. It is, first of all, the result of the PN’s refusal to recognise that there is a problem.
It refuses to acknowledge the heartbreak not only of the 7,500 individuals mentioned above. This is also about 7,500 families, 7,500 circles of friends who never expected that a brand new hospital that cost three times more than planned would fail so spectacularly to deliver the basic requisite of care in a bed in a hospital ward.
The least one expects is that human beings are treated and cared for in wards and not in corridors of shame.
Dr Cassar does not see this as a crisis he must solve. He tried to ignore the many points I made when we both discussed this issue on One TV programme, Realtà, two weeks ago. Once again, the minister refused to deal with this problem, came up with no policies, no solutions to the problems his own government created by not planning for enough beds.
I have been saying that this government is spectacularly poor on planning in almost every aspect of administration. I don’t need to say much about the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, the most distrusted body in Malta, according to a recent survey. Although Mepa is meant to handle planning it is viewed as corrupt.
Planning is lacking not only in the planning department. Planning is lacking in our health care system and the problems are growing by the day.
Corridors of care at Mater Dei have been transferred into corridors of shame. Our policies, the Labour Party’s policies, will be very different.
Our party in government will certainly make this a topmost priority. We will transform Mater Dei’s corridors back to being the corridors they were planned to be.
Patients will receive the care they need in a hospital ward, cared for by the excellent professors, doctors, nurses, care assistants and the whole team of people that put this government’s lack of planning and care to shame.
The author, a member of Parliament, is Labour spokesman for health.