The Medical Association of Malt (MAM) has filed a judicial protest seeking to stop the government from outsourcing IVF procedures to the private sector. 

This comes after Prime Minister Robert Abela announced the government would be sending couples on the waiting list for IVF to private clinics for treatment, during an electoral campaign event earlier this month. 

The government subsequently announced it would be spending €6 million to send some 650 couples for private IVF treatment, in a bid to slash waiting times. 

But the MAM says that this violates an agreement the government had entered into with doctors following a 2018 strike over the transfer of public hospitals to the private company Steward Healthcare. 

In this agreement, the MAM said that the government promised it would carry out “meaningful” consultation with the association and obtain its consent prior to forging ahead with any planned privatisation or outsourcing of any services that are offered as part of the national health service. 

The state disrespected this agreement when it published tenders for these services without any consultation or consent, as stipulated in the aforementioned agreement, the association said. 

“MAM is protesting that the Government is showing a lack of transparency. This is crucial in the light of the Vitals/Steward fraud,” MAM president Martin Balzan said. 

“The Association insists that any privatisation of medical services has to abide by signed agreements, have patients' best interest at their core and there has to be proper scrutiny of how taxpayer money is being spent.”

Balzan added that the country’s health infrastructure was now “in crisis” thanks to the defunct deal that saw three state hospitals handed over to the private company VGH and later Steward Health Care. This crisis can only be resolved if the way forward is planned holistically and with the involvement of all stakeholders, he said. 

While the MAM is not against involving private sector operators to cut waiting lists, including for IVF, but this should not be done at the expense of ignoring obligations. 

“The blatant disregard of existing agreements and the lack of consultation does not reassure doctors that the government has learned the lessons from the Vitals/Steward fraud,” Balzan said. 

The MAM is calling on the government to stop further privatisation until proper meaningful consultation is complete.