Last February Malta lived up to its fabled reputation as the nurse of the Mediterranean, and in the coming days and weeks it could very well be called upon to repeat the effort.

Events to our south over the last days have developed at a breakneck speed and at the time of writing yesterday, Gaddafi was still on the run but most of the country had fallen from his grasp.

Although the endgame in terms of usurping the Gaddafi regime is quickly approaching, it is just the beginning in terms of the enormous humanitarian effort that is expected to be brought underway in the very near future.

And Malta could very well be expected to play a fundamental role here, just as it had during the evacuation of over 24,000 third country nationals who had found themselves caught up in the midst of hostilities. Many, those foolhardy enough to have stayed on in Tripoli, are still attempting to flee the country by getting on to Malta-bound aircraft and vessels.

One CNN correspondent, among dozens virtually imprisoned at Tripoli’s Rixos Hotel and who yesterday feared they would be used as human shields, yesterday expressed hope after a Maltese government spokesperson informed them they could get on a Malta-bound flight. Eluding their guards, however, would be a different matter altogether.

But as opposed to the mass evacuations we had earlier this year, traffic this time around will flow in the other direction. Thankfully, projections drawn up and warnings issued by the experts of a tidal wave of Libyans fleeing the country toward Malta have not materialised, nor do they appear likely to.

Although oil-rich, Libya as a nation has been in need of a major reconstruction, or rather a construction, effort for decades, let alone now after six months of violence that has left much of the infrastructure the country had worthless.

But first come the medical and other humanitarian supplies, and that effort is expected to begin in the near future, with Tripoli hospitals running critically low on supplies. Then there will be the teams of international aid workers, engineers and reconstruction advisers, and possibly even a peacekeeping operation should the county fail to be brought under full rebel control.

And the government is very clearly preparing for the eventuality. On Tuesday it issued a legal notice ensuring there would be no prohibition or restriction on goods that are brought through Malta by or upon the request of an international or non-governmental organisation.

The government here is clearly setting the stage for a possibly massive humanitarian aid effort for Libya, with Malta serving as a staging post for the Libya relief effort.

Malta rose to the challenge last February, and it will do so again if duty calls.