Health Minister Joe Cassar has become a favourite target for the Labour Party and its allies in the media and it looks as if there is a systematic campaign against the minister, verging on the personal. They started off by actually attacking his family when they invented a story about his wife, and kept it up with a prolonged and structured campaign aimed at putting Dr Cassar in a bad light. It is a very obvious crusade to try to denigrate him and his efforts.

It seems that his sterling work in several spheres of the health sector is getting at Labour, who are picking on the one and only weakness there is in the system – the availability of beds at Mater Dei Hospital – to depict an all-round negative picture, when this is certainly not the case.

Let’s put the record straight. There is no denying that a problem exists at the main hospital. One mistake that has been made is that, in comments published in this newspaper last Sunday, it was mentioned that no patients had been kept in the corridors of the Emergency Department for the previous four days.

Maybe Dr Cassar and the hospital CEO should have been more cautious in their remarks and should have realised that it was only a matter of time before a fresh crisis erupted, and that they were opening themselves up to harsh criticism. As it happened, it only took 24 hours for the situation to worsen, and for patients once again to have to be accommodated in corridors as they awaited a bed in a ward.

The hospital administration, as well as the minister – who is politically responsible for the health sector – has been accused of bad planning and bad management. At face value, this may seem to be the case, but few bother to dig deeper to find out what has taken place, what efforts have been made to improve the situation and what other solutions have been envisaged but not implemented due to exterior factors.

For one thing, nobody has a magic wand. The space is what it is and, after all, Mater Dei Hospital was built over a period of time involving both Nationalist and Labour administrations, and therefore both should share the blame if there is a shortage of beds or wards.

What is forgotten by the Labour Party end is that a new wing to cater for cancer patients is being built as part of the Mater Dei complex. What stands out is that the Labour Party has not exactly approved the project, as it tries to continuously find fault with what is going on. So on the one hand the Labour Party complains about a shortage of beds, and then complains that a new cancer wing is being built. It would be good to know what their solution is.

What is also forgotten is that, over the past few months, the number of long-term patients at Mater Dei Hospital – those known as “social cases” – has been reduced from 80 to around 10. These patients have been taken to other hospitals specifically to make way for other patients who need acute treatment. Added to this, a redeployment exercise increased the number of beds by 81.

In spite of these moves, the number of beds available was not enough to meet demand. This is largely due to the fact that the winter we are experiencing is particularly harsh, and the number of people needing hospital care for illnesses related to the cold weather has been significantly higher than usual.

The hospital administration has not been twiddling its thumbs, but when it tried to find other ways of creating more space it did not find a red carpet rolled out by the unions. For example, there was resistance from the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses when it proposed adding a second bed in what were used as single-bed rooms. Eventually, when matters came to a head on the coldest day of the year (14 February), the administration decided to go ahead with its plans to do this, in spite of the union’s protestations.

An MUMN statement issued soon afterwards questioned the safety of having two beds instead of one, implying that it preferred that patients be accommodated in corridors. Is this the kind of safety that the MUMN wanted?

MUMN president Paul Pace said last Thursday that the union is prepared to order industrial action unless the situation is resolved. Later, the two sides came to terms but questions remain about the union’s attitude. Did Paul Pace want the hospital to turn people away?

He told this publishing house’s journalist that he was irritated that the hospital administration had taken the decision to add extra beds when he was abroad. Who does he think he is? Did he really expect the hospital to wait for his return? Did he want the patients to be kept in corridors until he came back to Malta?

In Paul Pace, Franco Debono has a serious contender for the top place in the self-importance lists.

There are other considerations to bear in mind, and first among them is primary health care. It seems that, generally speaking, family doctors are no longer as available as they used to be in the past, to the extent that 66 per cent of patients now go to the emergency department without a doctor’s referral.

When people go to hospital with what on the surface appears to be a serious matter, several tests need to be carried out, often necessitating at least an overnight stay. In the majority of cases, a patient who is kept for 24 or 48 hours in hospital does not need significant treatment, but is kept there because the hospital does not take risks. It is called “defensive medicine”.

Had that same patient been visited by the family doctor, who would know his or her record and personality, the patient would have probably stayed at home.

What does the Labour Party suggest – that patients are sent home without any tests being carried out, in order to avoid overcrowding in hospital? Is this their solution? Why does the Labour Party not encourage patients to visit their private doctor or a health centre before going to Mater Dei – with the likelihood that many of them would not have subsequently ended up in hospital?

All this inevitably adds to the pressure on Mater Dei Hospital. But when the government tries to ease the strain, it often comes up against a brick wall. For example, the Health Ministry wants to outsource more of its services – as it has done with cataract operations – but it is finding stiff resistance here as well.

Just to mention one thing: some time ago, agreement was reached for third tier emergency patients – the least serious – to be seen at a private hospital at the government’s expense, but the Medical Association of Malta threatened industrial action if the move went ahead, and so the idea was shelved. At least the MAM did say that what the government did regarding the additional hospital beds was the right way forward.

Doctors are also opposing the idea of having the hospital Outpatients Department open for longer hours than the current schedule. But if this department remains open until 5 or 6pm, as the Ministry is suggesting, then logic tells you that more patients will be seen and there will be less waiting time.

In all this hullabaloo, the many positive aspects of the health sector are not receiving the attention they deserve. Only this week we had the Libyan Health Minister praising the help her country had received in the health sector during the revolution, and the launch of the national strategy to combat obesity, which follows other initiatives such as the national sexual health strategy.

The number of operations being carried out at the hospital is increasing every year; an agreement has been reached for patients to undergo lung-transplant procedures in Palermo and the breast-screening clinic is another successful venture.

The list of positive initiatives goes on and on, but the Labour Party and its media allies never pick on them.

[email protected]