Last weekend, an elderly lady and her family bitterly discovered what Joseph Muscat’s promise to be the best in Europe amounts to.

On Saturday, the lady attended her grandson’s wedding. The following day she felt unwell. She was taken to hospital. For long hours she waited to be admitted to an infamous corridor in Mater Dei (at level -1), the one leading to the Medical Imaging Department.  

Unfortunately she died early on Monday morning.

Don’t be surprised if the health minister or his subordinate, the parliamentary secretary, sarcastically remarks that patients do sometimes die in hospital. The government has said that before.

The fact is, however, the family was totally shocked at the state of the service their dear mother was given.

They came to me with their story. Despite having heard many similar stories, I was shocked myself. Months have passed since I first spoke about the appalling conditions in this part of the hospital. I was mocked for speaking about them, the spin being that I was factually wrong.

But the dear lady died in the same conditions I had revealed months ago. This same corridor, which was meant to be a temporary solution, has become a permanent area for over fifty patients.

I have asked several parliamentary questions about the lack of privacy, the lack of dignity and the lack of services. This is a corridor which does not have oxygen points or suction points. The beds have no alarm to alert the nurses on duty. The shape of the corridor is curved and does not allow the nurses to see from one end of the corridor to another. There are no adequate sanitary facilities, including toilets and sinks.

Female and male patients share this horrible setting side by side. Patients have no privacy while being examined by doctors or seeing to their personal needs. Those who need oxygen have to use the huge cylinders which were once used at St Luke’s Hospital.

Patients with different medical conditions, some of which could be dangerous to others, are grouped together. Patients with chest infections are at arm’s length from patients with chest pains.

This is the state of Muscat’s health service. This is the bar of his health standards.

In these conditions it is very hard for our health care professionals to give the best service possible. The state of affairs is not their fault. On the contrary, the doctors, nurses and carers are to be commended for doing the sterling job they do in such inhumane conditions.

Nurses and TaghnaLkoll purses

It is against the general background of the state of health and Muscat’s ‘meritocracy’ (you’re meritorious only if you’re TaghnaLkoll) that we must understand the debate about the possible setting up of a nursing school.

Let’s be clear about some things. Over the past few days we commemorated two important international days related to the health sector: the international days of nurses and midwives. These two very noble professions are vocations. Any person who chooses them must have a strong attraction to the sense of duty, care and responsibility associated with these professions. No one chooses them for the money. Both professions are very demanding from a practical and academic point of view.

I obviously have no problem with a new nursing school… as long as such an institution is conceived within the bigger plan which includes MCAST and the University of Malta. The need for numbers should not dictate the importance of quality and high standards of education, training and consequently professionalism.

However, if Muscat and Konrad Mizzi have decided to handpick an individual, a ‘person of trust’, to run this project and take decisions on his own steam, without so much as consulting with the major educational and medical stakeholders of our country, then we’re in for a very dubious future indeed.

Clipping Air Malta’s wings

This week in parliament, question time proved to be yet another very revealing session. Thanks to a parliamentary question made by Claudio Grech and supplementary questions made by Mario De Marco and Jason Azzopardi, we got to know that Air Malta could be contemplating a serious downsizing of its fleet.

Edward Zammit Lewis did not confirm or deny. Neither did he guarantee that this was not going to happen in the near or not so near future.

There was visible discomfort on the Government side. You could have heard a pin drop when everybody’s attention turned onto this hot issue. While it was stated that our national airline handles 42% of all inbound tourism, no guarantees for the future were given.

Of course this is a huge concern for our country, our economy, our tourism and the above all the livelihood of hundreds of families who work with our national airline.

Surely more will unfold in the days to come. We will wait and see.