Irresponsible industrial action

Mater Dei Hospital’s emergency department has long grown small for the caseload it has to handle.

Failure to plan ahead for the population increase of the past decade is part to blame. Unfortunately, the government had since 2015 pinned its plan for improved public health care services and more hospital beds on the Vitals concession agreement.

This agreement had to deliver hundreds of new beds in a refurbished St Luke’s Hospital and a new, state of the art general hospital in Gozo.

But when this deal failed to deliver, government was left with a crisis on its hands because it had foregone public investment into new facilities in and around Mater Dei Hospital.

Health Minister Jo Etienne Abela is not to blame for this state of affairs for the simple reason he was not around before 2022. But the minister forms part of the same government that allowed the situation to reach this stage and so cannot be let off with a simple pat on the back. He has to atone for the sins of his predecessors and the only way he can do so in a meaningful way is by ensuring current plans for a new Gozo hospital and the expansion of the emergency department, which will also cater for an acute psychiatric wing, come to fruition in the shortest time possible, at the most cost-effective price and without the corruption that characterised the Vitals deal.

We do not hark back to the past capriciously. We do so because it helps us understand, the predicament the public health system is in today; the frustration it causes to ordinary people who feel short-changed; and the stress it causes medical and other hospital staff, who have to cope in less-than-optimal conditions.

We look to the past to help us understand the present but in doing so we also recognise the need to look ahead.

Within this context we find it hard to find justification for the resistance being put up by the Medical Association of Malta (MAM) regarding new arrangements at MDH’s emergency department.

To ease the pressure on MDH, the Health Ministry has entered into partnership agreements with private hospitals so that non-critical emergency cases can be referred by MDH doctors for treatment there. Transfers to private hospitals require the consent of both senior clinicians and patients themselves. The stop-gap solution until the emergency extension at MDH is built, aims to utilise all the country’s resources at a time of emergency.

Why MAM should oppose such an arrangement and order industrial action on the eve of it coming into force is incomprehensible.

The union is insisting no meaningful consultation took place prior to the system being introduced. The minister insists otherwise. As always, the truth is probably somewhere in between, caught up in the fog of soured personal relations between MAM President Martin Balzan and the minister.

What is worrying though is how this dispute came to a head just two days after the government announced the new partnership with three private hospitals to outsource emergency services. Also, the trade dispute was announced at a time when the public hospital is in a state of acute emergency because of the influenza season.

This is not a new phenomenon since winter brings with it influenza and other respiratory diseases that can cause serious complications for elderly and vulnerable people that may require hospitalisation. This has only made an already precarious situation at the emergency department and the hospital worse. Indeed, hospitals all over Europe are struggling to cope.

This is why embarking on industrial action now is irresponsible.

In the best interest of patients, MAM should withdraw its directive to members not to send patients for further treatment in private hospitals and sit down with the ministry to iron out its differences.