The Social Policy Ministry, which is responsible for the health sector, recently issued a statement giving statistics on the number of people who were given treatment at the accident and emergency department of Mater Dei Hospital “needlessly”. This was followed up this week with the launching of a campaign aimed to cut down on the unnecessary workload in the same department.

One of the arguments that was put forward by the ministry is that too many people go straight to Mater Dei Hospital for treatment when they could have easily received it either via their medical practitioner – in the comfort of their own home or at the doctor’s own clinic – or else at one of the government district clinics.

Between the day the hospital opened and the end of May, over 13,500 patients went to Mater Dei Hospital without needing to go there for the type of treatment they received. This means that, every day, more than 60 people went to the A & E department for treatment when they could have easily been treated elsewhere.

This “extra” work stretches the system at Mater Dei Hospital, and it is probably such extra pressure that in the end leads to complaints.

It is obvious that the doctors and nurses at Mater Dei Hospital give priority to the most urgent cases first. The system at any hospital is not on a first come first served basis, but it depends on the seriousness of the case. Someone suffering from a heart attack will be seen to before someone who has a broken finger, just to give one example, even if the person suffering from the fracture arrived in hospital first.

People who go to hospital for treatment “needlessly”, to use the same word as the ministry, add on to the workload and this, of course, leads to the delays that some people experience. The thing is that it is actually these people who do not need to go to hospital who are delayed the most, because obviously their cases are considered as having the “lowest priority” and are therefore seen to when the more serious cases are settled.

And then it is probably these people who end up complaining, when ultimately it will be their fault considering that they should have gone to their private doctor or to the district clinics.

The campaign that has been launched aims to help the public become more aware of what they have to do when they need medical assistance. It will inform them of all the options available. Its target is to lead to a culture change in a bid to improve the service for real emergencies.

Mater Dei Hospital should only be resorted to when the situation is very serious. It is only in this way that we would ourselves be contributing to lessening the delays experienced in hospital.

While the public can play its part in reducing the workload at the emergency department, the government has its own job to do to cut down on the unnecessary delays that are being experienced in other health areas, such as the long waiting lists for surgery – which Minister John Dalli himself described as “scandalous” soon after taking over the health portfolio.

In this regard, the ministry and the hospital administration must quickly come up with a plan to reduce the waiting lists, making them more manageable and at the same time of less inconvenience to the patients. People experiencing health problems, minor as they might be, will not rest before they sort it out, and having to wait months if not years for an operation to be carried out is not something that helps.