The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Health Chris Fearne announced a new initiative of the Mater Dei Hospital in order to increase the operations carried out by the public health service.
“We are using all the resources of the country, in an efficient way, to increase the operations and reduce the wait,” stated Minister Fearne, who explained how the operating rooms of the Mater Dei Hospital are being used. throughout the day, including Sundays and holidays. Apart from this, the Government issued a number of public competitive calls to purchase the services of the country’s private hospitals.
During a news conference at St Thomas Hospital, the Deputy Prime Minister announced how after a competitive call process, the hospital was chosen to offer an operating room and a room with fifteen beds for the use of patients of the public health system, free of charge. It is estimated that eight operations per day from the lists of the Mater Dei Hospital will be performed in this hospital, and therefore during the first year around 2,000 additional operations will be performed.
The Deputy Prime Minister recalled how during the two years of the pandemic, the human resources of the public health system were relocated to take care of patients with COVID-19 to save lives. As a result, a substantial number of non-urgent operations were postponed. He explained that during 2022, when the progress of the COVID-19 began to slow down, 60,500 operations were performed, which means that more than the average amount of operations per year were performed, so that the hospital meets the appointments of the operations that were postponed during the previous two years.
The Deputy Prime Minister Fearne stated that throughout this year the amount of operations is expected to continue increasing, also through these initiatives and through the opening of the Vincent Moran Regional Center later this year, where they will be doing ‘day surgeries’. All this with the aim that Maltese and Gozitan patients are served with the best service, in the shortest possible
time. Photo: ODPM-MFH
