The Health Department has been educating us about healthy living. Let’s face it – if we are living longer we have to invest in our health. Most Maltese families have family doctors who treat them and advise them accordingly. Yet, although there is a shortage of government doctors, private doctors are not authorised to order certain blood investigations like PSA  (prostate specific antigen), which is needed regularly by the majority of men over 60. So clients have to go to the Health Centre, wait for some hours in a queue of many who may need important medical care and have a form filled in by a doctor who knows nothing about the client and could be attending to the really ill. 

Another important investigation, this time for women, is the bone density test. Here again it is only government doctors who can make an application for this test. In my case, after I was advised by my family doctor that I needed this test, I made an appointment with the Gynaecology Department unit at the Mosta Health Centre, for which I had to wait six months. My appointment was at eight o’clock, as were all the other appointments for that day. Two ladies had to leave, due to work commitments, as by 8.45am nobody had even been seen by the doctor. The rest of us voiced our complaints as we felt that appointments should have been staggered and punctual. 

Lately, there was a drive urging people not to go to the hospital emergency department when there was no emergency. This was to make sure that doctors were doing the important work of looking after those who really needed their attention. In my opinion, doctors in health centres should also be concentrating on essential services rather than filling in forms for people whom they know nothing about and who would much prefer to go to their family doctor.   

I would like the competent authorities to look into this matter and do what is necessary to target services as needed thus sparing doctors for the real work that needs to be done.

Jane Azzopardi