Can somebody from the St Luke`s hospital management/superintendence, explain the rationale of scheduling so many appointments for the orthopaedic and other out-patients department, all at the same time of 8.30am? The overcrowding at St Luke’s is evidently engineered by the incompetent and indifferent management of this hospital, who lavishly furnished with computers and expensive software, still cannot organise a piss up in a brewery. I hope these people will be ear-marked for the order of the boot, well before Mater Dei is commissioned.

Today, 14 March, I had an 8.30am appointment, arranged for me by customer care. I arrived punctually at 08.25, after having to contend with the gridlock of rush hour traffic. I was asked to wait, along with all the rest, for five solid hours in a small, unhygienic, crowded, foul-smelling room. Eventually, I was called at 12.30 to see Mr Gatt`s deputy. He simply told me to go and have the old plaster removed and replaced with a fresh cast, and have yet another X-ray of my broken wrist. When I asked when I was going to have the intervention I was told about at the A&E, he asked me my age. It seems that Mr Gatt’s deputy does not think that at 70 years of age, I am worth the time and effort needed to fix my broken wrist.

To sum up, a whole frustrating morning was wasted for a plaster cast to be replacesd which took all of five minutes, an X-ray which took less than five minutes and a cursory look at the X-ray which took 37 seconds according to my stop watch. I arrived back home in Attard at 13.45.

Could this contempt for a meek and uncomplaining public, have anything to do with the government`s dismal showing in the recent local elections?

Victor Spiteri

ATTARD