Toenail care services offered by podiatrists in clinical and hospital settings are being stopped with immediate effect on grounds of health and safety, the Union Haddiema Maghqudin and the Association of Podiatrists in Malta said in a joint statement.

They said the services were being stopped as a preventive measure because of longstanding critical issues including lack of instruments in specific health centres and compromised health and safety both patients and clinicians.

They said that a decision was taken two weeks ago as part of a cost cutting exercise to change the packaging method of reusable instruments after sterilisation creating a situation that might cause a number of health hazards including cross-contamination.

Moreover, in specific health centres, equipment available for routine toenail care, particularly in the vulnerable diabetic population, was less than a fourth of the total daily requirement.

In other locations, most of the equipment available was broken or unsafe for use since according to standard international practices such equipment could only be used for a couple of months of repeated sterilisation. In many cases such equipment had not been replaced in the last four years.

The union and the association said that, in the past, this situation had only been tackled with temporary measures by the Department of Health creating a repeated longstanding problem, which cropped up from time to time.

At this stage, only permanent solutions were being sought addressing both the short and long-term and modelled on internationally recognised practice standards in podiatry, in the interest of patient and practitioner safety.