It is indeed quite a horrific dilemma. We often talk about the Health sector as being a hot potato. It is true. We pay our taxes and we expect results, and rightly so. Just as we pay our road taxes and expect good quality roads (it might be taking a while but we are getting there) we expect that our taxes might buy us a bed and a proper cubicle for our stay there.

Aside from all other issues that have plagued Mater Dei Hospital, the biggest issue is bed shortage. It is just too small. Hospital beds do end up in corridors, they are designed to cater for it, but it is to cater for a pandemic or a disaster.

But we are in a situation now where, quite a lot of the time, the hospital is overflowing. One of the major issues that surfaced in a recent parliamentary question put by the PN was that of long-term patients and patients waiting for a transfer to another facility. The answer was that there were 55 long term patients at Mater Dei and that 50 were awaiting transfer. Another question asked how many patients, during the same two-month period, were moved to state owned homes for the elderly. The answer was 50.

It’s not hard to put two and two together. The crux of the issue is that there are a lot of bedridden patients at Mater Dei and the spaces at homes for the elderly are so restricted. It is heartrending to say,  but you cannot predict when a death will happen and you cannot simply think of it as a conveyor belt. The population is continuing to get older and medical treatment is always improving. If we do not create more homes, then Mater Dei will continue to be burdened with – as they are so sadly labelled – social cases.

Elderly people (not the majority, thankfully) are sometimes dumped at Mater Dei and left to spend the last of their days there. Others simply have no one left. It must be, as we began this leading article, a horrific dilemma. These people cannot be sent home, they have nowhere to go and no one to look after them in their final years. The government has said that it is committed to sorting out the health sector. The results have been slow in coming, but there have been improvements. But while Mater Dei is too small, and the beds are short, part of the solution must be to increase the bed spaces at homes for the elderly. If that does not happen, then the overcrowding will persist and get worse.

That will, of course, be an additional burden on the coffers. But, in our society, it would be the most fitting way to solve the situation.