Opposition Health Spokesman Claudio Grech this morning expressed himself against government plans to privatise health centres saying that the way forward should be to invest more money to upgrade the present facilities and have regional facilities.
He noted that next year the government would allocate €500,000 for this purpose, which was €300,000 less than the sum allocated in the final year of the last PN administration. He added that the Floriana, and Gzira health centres were in urgent need of modernisation.
Mr Grech was addressing a news conference at the end of a visit at the National Screening Centre in Floriana.
The PN spokesman lauded the service given by this centre to screen against cancer and called for the government to consider expanding the service to screen against diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
Mr Grech also proposed making better use of family doctors, to help Mater Dei consultants issue free medicines for chronic conditions. Such things could be done as the necessary provisions were already in place thanks to the collective agreement signed in February of 2013, the PN spokesman said.
Earlier today, the MUMN nurses' union insisted that Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) were not the best way forward for the health service, because they invariably led to higher costs and reduced service.
The union made its comments in the context of the Budget and, particularly, plans to allocate Cospicua health centre to a private company.
The MUMN pointed out that when operations were outsourced in the past, the cost per operation tuned out to be much higher than had the operations been held at the state hospital. Outsourcing was phased out as the bills came in.
The union said it could not understand why the government wanted to outsource Cospicua health centre to a private company when this centre was giving sterling service with no complaints.
At a recent meeting, nurses who currently work at Cospicua had raised concern about privatisation - from data protection to specific health computer programmes linking to Mater Dei Hospital.
Services had already started to deteriorate as Cospicua because of the plans. While Anti Coagulant Clinics had been set up in all health centre, the service in Cospicua had been postponed due to the privatization plans of the health centre.
The union warned that assigning this centre to a private company would deny it of the experience and expertise which the current nurses had since none of them were willing to work within the private sector.
The union also regretted that Claudio Grech, opposition spokesman for health, was also championing PPPs without having held any consultation.
It called on the government to reconsider its plans.