International aid agency Medecins Sans Frontières has started providing services at a Maltese detention centre, three months after a widely-publicised withdrawal in protest over poor conditions.

MSF started seeing to immigrants at the new Ta' Kandja solidarity centre from last Wednesday, agency coordinator Gabriele Santi told The Sunday Times.

Though there are "encouraging signs", MSF will still not be offering any services at Lyster and Safi Barracks - which it pulled out from last March.

MSF had described the conditions at Malta's detention centres as appalling and inhuman.

The claims had been denied by Home Affairs Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici who said the government was doing all it could to improve the conditions but it was overwhelmed by the record number of arrivals last year.

But MSF's tone appeared to be more conciliatory yesterday, with Mr Santi saying that the agency decided to start offering services at the new centre following negotiations.

"The way things were operating at the centres was rendering our services useless. But we are seeing a willingness to improve. This is the first step," Mr Santi said.

Mr Santi said the authorities had seen to a series of shortcomings to ensure Ta' Kandja was up to requirements, including the creation of a proper isolation area. MSF had lamented that immigrants with infectious diseases were being kept with healthy individuals.

The organisation had also criticised the slow process to identify the more vulnerable groups, such as pregnant women and minors. It had said that most of the immigrants that landed in Malta were in good health upon arrival but they deteriorated during detention because of the poor conditions.

MSF had said the lack of a pharmacy in detention centres meant that medicines prescribed to immigrants were not delivered on time or at all, making it impossible to offer adequate and effective treatment.