Staff at Mater Dei Hospital have been forced to use cloth towels instead of paper tissues after these ran out recently, sparking hygiene concerns.

Sources who spoke to the Times of Malta this week said that the hospital seemed to have run out of paper towels, forcing medical staff to use cloth towels if they needed to wipe their hands.

According to the sources, the same problem was also reported some time ago, with paper towels being unavailable for about three weeks.

“We have resorted to using cloth towels or toilet paper but it should not be this way,” one source said, adding that staff were concerned that as a result, hygiene standards at the hospital were not always up to par.

Contacted about the shortage, a Health Ministry spokeswoman confirmed that the Central Procurement and Supplies Unit had a delay in one of its consignments “due to the bad weather”.

“The situation was recouped in a couple of days. During those days redistribution of stock took place to cover all wards and other disposable towels were made available where needed,” the spokeswoman said.

On whether there was any spare stock, the ministry spokeswoman said that there was such a stock and in fact this was used and redistributed around the hospital.

She pointed out that the disposable towels are rather “bulky” though and so it was difficult to store large amounts of spare stock due to space problems.

When informed that sources had insisted that they had been forced to make use of towels, the spokeswoman said that she was not aware that staff in any of the wards had had to resort to such a practice, adding that “other disposable material” had been made available for the staff at the hospital.

Read: MRSA cases at Mater Dei down by 90 per cent

Last year, Health Minister Chris Fearne announced that in recent years, Mater Dei had implemented several measures as part of efforts to cut down infections spread in hospitals, such as the methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus.

At the time he had referred to “several measures” that were stepped up, including stricter hand-washing procedures among hospital staff.

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