Mater Dei crisis is all government’s fault – Labour MP

Speaking in parliament, Farrugia said the problem of lack of staff has long-been on the government’s agenda and it is more than clear that it did absolutely nothing to counter this while embarking on the massive project of a sate-of the-art hospital.

Worse than the long-waiting list for operations, Farrugia said that we have the absurd situation where hundreds of patients face waiting for hours to receive treatment, while many other patients remain without a bed and alone in corridors.

Later during his address, Farrugia maintained that government is showing a lack of vision and planning in its back-and-forth decision to build a new linear accelerator bunker at Mater Dei hospital.

The barrage follows hot in the heels of a series of exchanges between the Health Department and the Emergency Nurses Union, where Health Department repeatedly downplayed the critical overcrowding situation at Mater Dei.

Initially, the health department pointed to the seasonal influenza as the cause for the overcrowding – a claim that was shot down by the EMU which said that it had warned health department three months ago of overcrowding problems as winter season brings more patients to Mater Dei hospital.

Statements by government said that the situation was well in hand and that “everything was back to normal” were again shot down. On Monday 10 January,  the union revealed that "Area 2 was closed down again, with 12 patients waiting for more than 18 hours on a stretcher."

Weeks ago, the Malta Union of Midvives and Nurses said lack of bed space inside Mater Dei was prompting doctors inside the maternity ward to induce labour unnecessarily so as to free up beds.