After St Luke’s Hospital serving patients for such a long time and with such a lot of success stories, it is now serving its retirement in squalor.

I recently attended Mater Dei Hospital for various appointments. Two of these appointments were undertaken at Mater Dei, very professionally and with the utmost kindness and attention. For my third appointment I had to go to the outpatient unit at St Luke’s. I thought this would be an easy task seeing that not a lot goes on at St Luke’s now.

On arrival, my husband and I were met with a battery of road signs which would be better suited near the Transport Office than a part-time hospital. We looked and looked for the word “entrance” but none existed. The old main entrance door was closed and we went to a side door to ask a sole lady behind a counter. She directed us to go to the old mortuary and facing it we would find a large green door, and that is where the OPU is.

Bear in mind that I am disabled: We had to walk all the way round to a horrible area that would not even suit a fifth world country. Still no signs, so we took our chance through the large green door that faced us. Inside was the most insalubrious reception room that one could ever come across. The ceiling had two broken and half hanging tiles which seemed to me as if they could be made with asbestos and on the side a little window where one could present one’s query. Our visit was of no avail anyway as it seemed that I lacked the pink card to give me what I needed free of charge. I offered to pay as I need these items urgently but “No” was the first and final answer.

However, we were so very upset at the state St Luke’s has been reduced to. Surely parts of it could happily be still serving certain sections which are overwhemingly overbooked at Mater Dei. And why could it not become an oncology hospital? The inside might be old but the outside is strong and firm and though old it is surely not ready to be bulldozed. The foundation stone was only laid in the 1920s and it only became an up and going hospital in the late 1940s. Do we let the Palace in Valletta or Auberge de Castille go to rack and ruin just because they are old? Is Malta that well off not to make use of a wonderful empty, already built premises to ease the overloading at Mater Dei? Or do we have to keep having new designs by foreign architects to keep spoiling the architectural beauty of the island with some monstrous edifice?

Be it as it may, at least let’s make the patients who have to attend St Luke’s a bit more welcome by putting up some sort of map showing where the working areas are and, please, more helpful signs rather than traffic information. Mater Dei is certainly Cinderella after she met her prince but St Luke’s has definitely become its ugly sister.