A new ward aimed at providing critical specialised care to patients recovering from operations was inaugurated at Mater Dei hospital.

Speaking at the inauguration, Health Minister Chris Fearne said the ward, to be known as the High Dependancy Unit ward, was felt necessary in a bid to reduce operation list waiting times while provide better care to recovering patients from major operations.

“As part of the Covid-19 recovery plan, this ward is key in providing the necessary resources to get back to where we were before the pandemic,” Fearne said.

As a result of the pandemic, before the vaccination roll out gained momentum operation waiting list times had grown exponentially due to the fact that non-essential operations were stopped at Mater Dei. Some 6,000 patients were waiting for surgery in April.

Fearne announced that till September, the number of people on the waiting list had been reduced to 3,380 people. He said that “the number of people on the waiting list was too high for us to accept and as soon as the Covid-19 numbers went down, measures were put into place to reduce these numbers.”

Fearne said that this reduction was due to a number of factors such as the new ward. Other factors include conducting operations on Sundays and public holidays as well as outsourcing operations to independent hospitals and the same operations being paid for by the government.

Doctor of Surgery Jo-Etienne Abela said that so far since when the new ward was put into operational use, “the ward has treated 250 patients who were in critical care. We are very happy with the results and it is a clear show that this project was successful.”

Fearne said that “Malta is on the road to normality but unfortunately the same can not be said for other countries who are currently in another wave of Covid-19. The decisions we took in order to slowly ease mitigation measures helped us reach the position we are in today,”