While our doctors have been greedily looking after their own interests in an ever-changing scenario of the Maltese health sector which, undoubtedly, needs a long-overdue refit more than Malta needs water, elsewhere there have been developments that, as a nation, should set us seriously rethinking our doctor-patient relationship.
Gone are the days when doctors and specialists were treated as some sort of demi-gods. While the elitist few persist, some of whom hardly bother to talk to you unless you first visit their private clinic, there has been a vast change in the mentality of the medical profession worldwide. A new, more realistic approach on the part of the profession has, in the process, helped gradually nurture a new political psyche that now leads to a much fairer and much less cruel method of letting a patient suffering from ALS, commonly known as Motor Neurone Syndrome, to die a peaceful and painless death.
The most recent case to touch people’s hearts everywhere took place in nearby Italy where 49-year-old Patrizia Cocco from the Sardinian city of Nuore was the first person to use Italy’s new medical laws, passed only last December, that allow for such patients to end their own lives by refusing ventilation.
Known in Italy as the “Living Will”, the new rules mean that patients can have their life-support machine turned off without a court hearing and doctors can give them palliative treatment to end their lives. Applause broke out in the Chamber, not always the most harmonious of parliamentary venues, when the law was passed, with campaigners bursting into tears as the change was enacted by 180 votes against 71.
In contrast to what is always a horrendous and often undignified death, Patrizia Cocco’s courageous and lucid decision gave her the dignity to pass away smiling and surrounded by family and friends. She had waited for years for the law to change, having felt imprisoned by the ruthless illness and forced to survive in conditions she no longer wanted to endure. In a nutshell, Italian lawmakers finally managed to come up with a law that protects the right to health, dignity and self-determination.
Is it too much to ask of our politicians, our doctors and our specialists to converge, to pave the way for similar legislature that would help cover Maltese patients in the same positive and humane manner? The long and most impressive debate that took place in Italy’s two chambers on the issue could form a remarkable platform, given our various similarities as a society. Since 2013, Malta has gained a reputation as a torchbearer for innovative and often brave decisions in various social and economic fields, particularly on gender equality, LGBTIQ rights and medical cannabis issues.
Ironically, it was under the previous Gonzi Administration that the 2011 divorce referendum set the country on track to its destination and gave people the impetus for change. At the time, Malta was one of only three countries in the world, along with the Philippines and the Vatican, in which divorce was not permitted. It is now, of course, forgotten recent history, but it continues to show there is an on-going motivation for better laws and better ways to deal with life’s tribulations, whether physical, behavioural or otherwise.
The best-run homes with their modern electronic amenities and professional services are not enough in the case of patients like Patrizia Cocco who have to face what has been medically ascertained as a cruel and agonizing future. Is it not time to rethink it all on the local front too?
***
Trumped-up
This title term fits perfectly the American President’s recent howler regarding healthcare systems in most of Europe and particularly the UK’s pioneering NHS, which unsurprisingly irked the vast majority of people who make full use of them.
There is an obvious ideological glitch in Donald Trump’s (and his featherbrained followers’) judgement on this issue. He was no doubt misled by the increasingly vociferous debate in the House of Commons and the British media on problems facing the NHS, interpreting it as some sort of social and political malaise when in fact it just shows how passionate and demanding people there, and in the rest of Europe, are to make sure their free health services are not only maintained but also improved and updated to cater for new societal needs.
Knowing that there are 28 million people in the United States who have no medical cover, it beggars belief to have the leader of such a powerful and rightly proud nation attacking Britain’s magnificent NHS. Significantly, both the Tories and Labour hit back at Trump’s derision of free healthcare. It should be said the NHS has, over the decades, been copied and even bettered elsewhere, not least on these islands, if MAM’s smirking strikers would allow.
***
Regretting things
I am sure most level-headed columnists anywhere in the world sometimes regret having said certain things, but that is the way with opinions, in both giving them and receiving them. I, for one, do acknowledge it, while those who, for the sake of the wrong sort of consistency do not, are only deluding themselves.
The pleasure of exchanging opinions and, as we do in the process, updating them, is a healthy intellectual exercise and the self-declared righteous and blameless only attest to their own naivety. But then of course there are instances when one actually doesn’t regret having said certain things because time has proved him right.
This tail end was actually inspired by a recent tweet in which Anthony Bourdain, the popular American chef, author and television personality, declared: “Frequently, I’ve come to regret things I’ve said. This, from 2001, is not one of those times: Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never want to stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milosevic.”
Still want to know why, Mr Bourdain? Because he’s American.