The Nationalist Party’s health sector spokesman, Claudio Grech, said Minister Konrad Mizzi confirmed that the Labour government had wasted its first year of the legislature as far as health was concerned.

Although he has been in government over a year, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has not found a solution to the challenges in the sector, including hospital waiting lists, out of stock medicines and the beds and overcrowding crises at Mater Dei Hospital.

Mr Grech said the PN has noted that after all the manoeuvring in the mental health sector the government has now decided to revert to the structures that were in being before September, 2013. This showed once again that the only change the government has implemented in the sector in the past year was a change for the worse and not for a Better Malta.

Mr Grech said the change made in 2013, which split the community mental health services and those of Mt Carmel Hospital, was meant only to remove former CEO Dolores Gauci, who has very experienced, with foreign recognition, and worked for Better Malta. Instead of her, he added, the government appointed Labour Party candidate Clifton Grima, who has no experience in such a sensitive sector. 

The unfortunate thing is that the regress in the mental health sector is being paid for by the patients and their relatives, Mr Grech said.

He added that the health sector is too sensitive for the government to turn into a political football for its partisan reasons. The country expected Dr Muscat’s government would not continue using such sensitive positions and structures to serve its inner circle but to truly work for a Better Malta for all.

http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-04-22/news/healthcare-sector-being-assessed-konrad-mizzi-says-lauds-predecessors-work-4708335616/