There is but one voice at the moment to speak for the patients and the needs of the sick and that is the Medical Association of Malta.  In protecting the rights and conditions of the medical staff, they also ensure that the service can reach the patients where and when it is needed, which currently risks being compromised for the next 30 to 99 years. The structure of medical care goes beyond the peddling of buildings and the politics of the day. 

We repeatedly hear that Dr Chris Fearne has done well as the Minister for Health.  How can this be when we are facing a monumental catastrophe in our health sector?  Is the praise based on whether there are medicines in stock or if the number of patients waiting for an operation has declined?  That is all well and good, but normally such management is but a detail within the holistic planning for the health sector, where we currently face a structural failure and a growing and aging population.

It all started with Konrad Mizzi telling us that the cement at Mater Dei is rotten.  Today we know that the whole Vitals Global Healthcare project is itself not just rotten but treason. The Maltese people have been betrayed beyond belief.  This is the crisis facing us now.  That the immensity of the betrayal is so huge that it is hard to grasp in its full extent and it is that which keeps Fearne chugging through the mire and the pit of horror that has been created by Projects Malta.

The leader of the Opposition, Adrian Delia, in his article in The Times laid out clearly the billions of euros that were practically donated to Vitals, or would have been had the insane public private partnership been allowed to proceed.  Seeing the Vitals agreement is no consolation.  A broken egg is still a broken egg.  The whole engineering of this agreement was to facilitate unknown investors in a scheme to make money.  Health, patients, the free health service was but a detail on to which to hang the narrative.

And now still, they persist in pursuing this kind of deal.

Beneath the dark shadow, lie the sick.  Billions are set to be spent whether it is to Steward Health Care or to whoever.  In the meantime, 150 children are sent abroad for cancer treatment.  And that is besides the adults.  Many.  And we are grateful to have access to quality treatment but the impact of having to be separated from loved ones and far from your home is a factor that is contributing to deaths and added suffering.

Is it possible that those billions for Vitals cannot be put to better use in aiming to provide the care and service needed here at home by attracting specialists and nurses to fund treatment in our own hospitals?  Dr Muscat said he wanted to make Malta the best in Europe.  At the same time, we cannot even treat our patients and instead we send them to Europe with the help of Puttinu Cares (which depends on the public’s donations) and the Community Chest Fund (also funded by donations). 

The effect of being out of your country is directly related to chances of recovery.  If you are depressed and missing your family or if as a father or mother you worry about the effect that the separation has had on the children and your wife or husband, it can be devastating.  They are broken hearted and this impacts on their strength making them susceptible to complications.  Months are needed to undergo the treatment, all the while not knowing if it will be successful.  Adults have left theirwork, their livelihood and do not have the time to put their affairs in order.  That is more worry weighing on them.  At least, if you are in Malta, you can communicate with persons who can help you to sort out the loose ends and put your mind at rest.

Accommodation is not provided everywhere in London.  If, for example, you are transferred to the Royal Marsden in Chelsea, then a relative is looking at around £70 a night for a bed or the mercy of the hospital that will provide a makeshift room which you cannot lock from outside and is only meant as a temporary place where you can have a shower or rest in between bedside nights.  You feel like a vagabond.

Of course, not everyone can leave home to be with loved ones.  Many are obliged to work and cannot simply go abroad.  That separation causes great suffering, especially at a time when you want more than ever to be close to the ones you love, going through the ordeal of treatment abroad.

If we can say that it is possible to have a new University and even boast about it – the American University of Malta – from scratch, attracting academic staff of the required standard and having enough students to justify it, then 150 children being treated abroad is certainly more than the 15 or less students at the AUM.  Maybe we will not be able to treat all cancers but is it possible to maybe focus on the more common ones and try at least to provide treatment for those? Has anyone yet challenged the precept that our population is too small to warrant the investment and recruit the doctors? Today, remote surgeries are carried out with digital technology.  The surgeons have been in one country and the patient in another.  So, on another level, it’s possible to cooperate and share and bring in expertise where it is lacking here.  We are still sending blood tests abroad, waiting weeks for results.  I wonder if we are growing complacent about it. Even if one patient out of 50 could benefit, let us endeavour to bring the treatment to Malta instead of readily sending our patients abroad without a second thought.

What improvement in the health service will our country actually make by having Steward or Vitals or Jack Daniels come to run the three hospitals?  Beyond even the incomprehensible agreement, we are not told of any new department or plans to expand the health service. We were only told that foreigners would come for medical tourism and a few beds would remain free for our patients. So all of this scenario is to enable medical tourism as it’s main priority and there are serious doubts about the success of such a venture, probably as envisaged by the banks that would not extend a loan to VGH.

Mater Dei hospital is crowded and over populated.  The delay in surgeries is with us right now and ongoing.  Flu epidemics bring it to its knees.  People are left in corridors or stuck right next to each other in mixed wards, like chickens.  Food is rationed with minute portions (much like Airmalta).  Privacy is scarce.  In such an environment, it is difficult to find rest and healing.  Here too, the lack of parking facilities crushes those who visit the sick.  It is an absurd situation.  If ever the government was thinking of making a tunnel to Gozo, I suggest they begin with an overhead train from Valletta to Mater Dei going back and forth.  What system can handle the volume of people coming to Mater Dei every day and needing to park?

Decentralisation is needed urgently.  Even in London, the Royal Marsden has its cancer treatment in the Sutton hospital but its intensive care unit is in Chelsea, 14 miles away. Doctors share duty in both hospitals and critical care nurses are sent from Chelsea to Sutton to handle emergency cases. 

Ironically, where going higher is most needed, at Mater Dei hospital, to add more beds, it is not possible, whilst all around us we are engulfed by high rise buildings. 

The Minister should rise to the occasion, along with his colleagues in the government and push the emergency button now and stop playing second fiddle to Konrad Mizzi, telling the MAM that he agrees that the Vitals contract was not in the interest of the people and at the same time pursuing the same track with Steward.  He is committing to serving Steward Health Care, not Malta and the Maltese health service, otherwise we would not be where we are now, shipwrecked and sinking.