In this day and age, when the common political jargon is competitiveness, modernization and restructuring, it seems that the dimension of time at Saint Luke’s Hospital is stuck on a totally antiquated frequency. One has to get sick of the bureaucratic staff before being eligible to receive the most needed medication. In this era when the Maltese government is proud of having introduced one of the most comprehensive e-government systems on the net, senior citizens have to carry a blue card for each department they get to visit.

To have the required pills one has to produce a Schedule V (yellow) and Schedule II (pink) card in order to be eligible for them. You can have thousands of pupils working at the hospital and still have an inefficient system there. If this system worked 20 or 30 years ago, I’m sure that it isn’t nowadays. With an ageing population and a plan of having less people employed as civil servants, this old fashioned method will continue to implode and get worse each day with loads of new data needed to be filed continuously.

I still cannot understand the scientific reason why “after the age of 75 cholesterol does not appear to remain a risk factor and there is no rationale for testing or treating it”, as stated by a DH circular (113/98) dated 20 July 1998. I couldn’t find any similar statements on the World Health Organisation site. The information given to the public is always distorted by political rhetoric and opportunism. Can the Health Division inform us whether this decision was a health-wise or money-wise one?

Why is this happening? The State ran out of money because of its ruling elite. The country has an upside down list of priorities. This is the tactic all Europe is using to discourage people from obtaining their health services and other kinds of services from the State. Hence the people have no other option, except to resort to private hospitals or clinics. With taxes on the increase and the social services on decline, one can recognise that there’s a leakage somewhere. We need a service, and we should not beg to have something we are entitled to, by right.

In this post-modern era of plastic cards we still have to present ourselves in hospital with a worn brown envelope full of different permits; there is always the risk of forgetting one sheet, which means one might miss out on something. We can end this saga by introducing a system where each citizen would have a card (the size of a credit card), from which records can be easily retrieved without any time consuming methods. A hospital computer network is already available in hospital. The right to medication and appointments at the out-patients department should be recorded on this card and this way the client would not have the hassle of preparing an envelope for each department s/he visits. Instead of signing the permits and protocols, the consultant could scan his barcode to approve the needed pills in a second.

Technological progress should not be utilised to have more political smiling faces on the net (www.gov.mt). Technology should be utilized to make life easier for those who deserve better treatment. Many who visit the out-patients department are elderly persons who worked so hard for what we have today (or don’t have). Most of the people who go there are the first to worry when new taxes are imposed. When are the efficiency arguments going to reach the health services?

Christopher Cutajar

SANTA LUCIJA