Doctors working in health centres

I refer to the statement of the Medical Association of Malta (MAM), as reported in the article "MAM confident of fair agreement'" (May 27).

In the statement, MAM had said that there were only 50 full-time doctors working in health centres, and that the health division, in making its calculations, had included doctors on unpaid leave, those in the administrative stream and part-time doctors.

The facts are as listed hereunder:

This shows that there is a total of over 69 doctor-whole-time-equivalents working in health centres. This is arrived at by adding the 61 full-time doctors +3+1.5+3.9 whole-time-equivalents. Taking a full complement of 95 doctors (excluding the Birkirkara health centre) the results would show that the health centres are currently working with 73 per cent of the approved complement.

This would drop to 66 per cent if the complement of doctors required to run the Birkirkara health centre on a full-time basis were to be included. Doctors working in administration are not included in the above figures.