Operations carried out at Mater Dei Hospital in the first five months of this year shot up by 1,009 to just over 19,000 when compared with the same period in 2011, according to the latest statistics.

The older we get, the more vulnerable we are, which means more pressures on the healthcare system

The Health Ministry welcomed this increase especially since in 2011 the hospital had already registered an increase of 1,952 over 2010. This year’s operations were mostly planned, with a big bulk related to orthopaedics.

When contacted, Health Minister Joe Cassar said these figures had been achieved through better use of operating theatres, increased diligence, and surgeons’ commitment.

All this served to reduce the waiting time patients faced, but Dr Cassar warned that Malta had a price to pay for being among the best in the EU when it came to life expectancy.

“The older we get, the more vulnerable we are, which means more operations and pressures on the healthcare system. Waiting lists are not going to go down, but we’re addressing the amount of time people have to wait for their procedure,” he said.

Since 2009 the ministry has addressed the cause and effect of waiting lists at a structural level and confirmed these were the direct result of demand exceeding the capacity of supply; and that the expansion of waiting lists was directly related to a progressively ageing population.

The list of pending orthopaedic surgeries at Mater Dei is among the highest, and was last year surpassed by that for cataracts. However, the problem of the latter started being resolved when the government last year decided to outsource cataract operations to private hospital; it is now no longer the longest waiting list.

The waiting time for a cataract operation has been slashed to 18 months from five years for normal procedures.

Dr Cassar said the ministry was planning to tackle the orthopaedic waiting time in a similar way and by the end of July arthroscopic operations – where a telescope is used to look inside the knee for diagnosis and treatment of, for example, torn cartilages and cruciate ligaments – will be outsourced to private hospitals.

The waiting list for these interventions, an important procedure for hundreds of young people seeking this treatment, stands at around 1,800 and is one of the longest, with a waiting time of about one year.

This move would help free up time and space at Mater Dei for those seeking to undergo the more serious knee and hip replacements

Dr Cassar said an expression of interest had been issued and by the end of this month arthroscopic surgeries would start being farmed out.