The silence of the lambs

Great national controversies have great political attraction. They are politically magnetic. Piano’s Valletta project, Smart cities, parliamentary jousting and political scandals are very much like fast food. They are quick politics.

But while all the howling and screaming is going about, there are many that are suffering in silence and oblivion. Like slow food, the day-to-day sufferings of the ordinary man take time to digest and lack the political glitter that big issues normally bring with them. There are politicians that are after a quick but yet  attractive and cheap meal.

Huntington’s Disease is a dreadful, painful and slow disease. From what I could gather, for I am no medical expert, it is a degenerative disease which effects the nervous system. There comes the time, when the patient will not be in a position to feed himself autonomously. The main organs of the digestive system start to fail. At this stage a foreign body is needed for the patient to survive, otherwise he will literally drown in the food he eats.

The foreign body is called a feeding bag. It is expensive, and can only be used for a mere three days. There use beyond this time period entails high risks of infection. The only provider of these feeding bags is the government.

Some time ago, these feeding bags were out of stock for a good three months. Patients with this condition were constrained to bathe used feedings in salt water to presumably extend there life time of use, with all the risks that this unorthodox method of sterilization entails. It was only after that relatives of patients suffering from this condition decided to go public that fresh feed bags become again available from the government pharmacy. They found that silence was their worst enemy. But only for some days because they are again out of stock!

A young man of 20 fell ill while he was at work. This was four years ago. He discovered that he had severe renal problems. Since then he has been attending regularly three times a week at the hospital for medication. His condition is irreversible. It can be contained, but in the long run it will worsen. For the whole time that he has been unemployed for he is in no position to engage himself in any form of work; it was only some few weeks ago that he started to receive some kind of social assistance due to his condition.

When he fell ill four years ago, very much to his astonishment and that of his relatives, he was bluntly informed by the Social Security Department, that he was not entitled to any form of social assistance because his employer had failed to pay on his behalf all the relative social contributions. He explained to the Department that this was no fault on his part. The money for those contributions had been deducted from his wages at source and that he should not be penalized for the mishaps of his former employer.

The reaction of the department was blank and unshakable: the law is the law. For a good four years, this young man had to scrape a living from what he could beg from some of his friends and family relatives. Until life had become so unbearable and undignified that he decided to go public. Only some weeks a ago I received a telephone call from this young person and very much like a person who has received a €4 million commission, he informed me with a sense of joy and relief that he has just started to receive some sort of social assistance!

Now these are only two of the ordinary stories coming out of the daily and ordinary life of those that suffer in silence. These stories may not be so spectacular, but only God knows how many other sufferings are there, which have never come to our knowledge. And when say God, I mean God, for only He knows all. Politicians are humans, and human nature being what it is, they find rather convenient not knowing what they should know!