The Nationalist Party on Tuesday issued a statement to express its concern that the list of medicines that are out of stock is growing longer. For example, it mentioned that the provision of insulin has not been regular over the past month. It then gave a partial list of medicines that are currently not available, mentioning patients with diabetes and with stomach, prostate cancer and eye pressure issues not being able to obtain the medicines they need.

The government is usually quick to reply to criticism by the Opposition, often responding within an hour or two. This time, it took more than half a day for the Health Ministry to cough up its reply, simply saying that the situation is under control. It said that 25 out of 27 EU countries are facing such shortages, implying that if others are suffering, then it’s ok to suffer too.

The PN replied to this government press statement, cheekily commenting that the government had promised to deliver medicines to people’s homes, a promise that it never fulfilled. Now it cannot even deliver medicines to pharmacies, the PN said.

The Labour Party, when in opposition, used to make a big deal about deficiencies in the provision of medicines. It promised it would work hard to solve any problems which cause so much inconvenience to patients, apart from meaning that they have often had to buy medicines which should have been provided for free by the State. But now it seems that the Labour government is facing the same difficulties.

The Health Ministry’s statement in reply to the PN’s criticism was rather weak, and it failed to convince us that “all is under control”.

For one thing, it did not address one very important point that was raised in the original statement issued by the PN.

In it, the three spokespersons for the party – Claudette Buttigieg, Ian Vassallo and Stephen Spiteri – pointed out that the last time the list of out of stock medicines was updated by the government was on 7 November.

This list is supposedly updated every week, but more than seven weeks have passed since the last list of unavailable medicines was published. The government did not explain or give a reason as to why this list has not been updated for nearly two months.

It does give the impression that the government wants to hide something. The last list that was available contained 25 medicines which are out of stock. A quick look at the website where such information is provided shows that for the past years the government always published the list; so we have to ask why the practice has stopped.

The government will probably come up with some frail excuse, but what is important is that the publication of such a list resumes with regularity.

The same website shows that the last time that all medicines were available – and that no items were out of stock – was on 28 November 2019. That’s more than three years ago.

The government would do well to seriously look into the situation and come up with solutions.