All the nice-sounding solutions will not help people waiting for the bus

Time and again, even before the current election campaign, and the issue of health services is frequently mentioned.

Various complaints are raised – from the long hours of waiting at the Emergency Department to the overcrowding of patients there to the non-availability of certain drugs and medicines, etc.

But no attention whatsoever is given to one constant cause for additional suffering for relatives of patients and even those who go to the hospital’s outpatients departments.

When this huge state-of-the-art hospital was planned and built, taking all of seven years and countless millions, no thought whatsoever was given to access to public transport.

At that time, public transport was served by the yellow buses and a sort of hub system from all towns and villages in Malta was created to take people to the hospital.

Then Arriva came and at first all was chaos. Later on the system was changed and changed again and today one can say there is adequate service from all over Malta.

But still people have to wait for their bus in blinding cold and wind, rain or sleet, hail or ice – and that’s in winter. As for summer, they have to wait in searing sun and sizzling heat.

The situation is particularly cruel in wintertime. People visiting their relatives in the hospital come out to face the cold winds and/or rain etc.

The situation would have been far less painful had someone in the highly-remunerated planners and designers allowed some space in that vast hospital for a public transport hub, preferably underground.

Even today, however, with some ingenuity, it may still be possible to create such an underground hub. All it requires is the will to do so, the will to treat people as citizens to whom honour and respect are due, instead of treating them as cattle.

Even replicating the turning circle and the bus stops underground would be fine. Even putting in a shelter that stops the rain and the wind, the sun and the heat, would be fine as well. But possibly, that could detract from the acknowledged beautiful lines of the approach to the hospital and its manicured lawns.

 There are, of course, other issues regarding the hospital and healthcare in general and this gripe we mention today pales in contrast but it is a real problem. Anyone doubting that is invited to spend an hour or so waiting for a bus in the cold wind.

Unfortunately, however, just as those who planned and inflicted Arriva on the population have still to be seen on one, so too those who planned this hospital without its proper public transport hub are driven here and there by drivers so they have simply no understanding of the effects and impacts of their decisions.