During a press conference held at the Gozo General Hospital, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Rights of Persons with Disability and Active Ageing, Justyne Caruana, announced that the Government has purchased ten beds within the Public Private Partnership scheme to address the social case problem at the Gozo General Hospital.
She said that the Government has recognised the problem of social cases at the Gozo General Hospital and also recognises that for many years a wrongful practice was being utilised, in order to hush up waiting lists for residential services. She also said that by this practice, elderly individuals that were asking for residential services were beginning to be placed to wait in the hospital's wards, that in turn, repeatedly, was being a cause of overpopulation.
Dr Caruana claimed that for this reason, the Parliamentary Secretariat is taking the initiative to address this problem by offering, for the first time, this long-term residential care service in Gozo. The Government, by means of an agreement with the administration of Villa San Lawrenz is offering these services in the same method as they are offered in Malta, via the Public Private Partnership scheme.
This also happened due to the fact that, as the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses (MUMN) has said, the social cases in the Gozo General Hospital were on the increase. Therefore these beds were purchased by the Parliamentary Secretariat as the responsible entity of the residential services for the elderly on a national level.
The Parliamentary Secretary announced that in the following months, the services for the elderly in Gozo are expected to increase, as there is a lack of these services. In fact, the Respite service in Gozo was officially launched on the 14th January.