Critical medical shortages in many hospital departments may lead to a delay in the opening of the Mater Dei Hospital, a Medical Association of Malta resolution says.
The resolution, unanimously voted for at the association’s annual general meeting, also said that experienced doctors were leaving Malta to work abroad because discussions about working conditions at the Mater Dei Hospital had not been concluded.
The resolution authorised the association’s council to complain to the European Commission that the GP vocational training scheme had not been introduced, though there was an obligation in the accession treaty to implement it.
The meeting noted that staff shortages at the health centres had reached an alarming level, but the general practitioner vocational training scheme had not been introduced.
The association’s council was authorised to take whatever measures were felt necessary “to ensure that all discussions on working conditions are concluded before any medical staff can be deployed to the Mater Dei Hospital.”
The resolution said that as the medical manpower situation worsened, doctors’ working conditions continued to deteriorate while the health service continued to experience increasing difficulties to provide the best possible service to patients.
“Consequently,” it said, “it is feared that because of the critical shortages in many departments such as the accident and emergency, anaesthesia, pathology, radiology, oncology and orthopaedics, Mater Dei may not be able to open and operate fully on time as planned.”