Mater Dei’s emergency department went into overdrive on Thursday, with nurses from wards and even St Luke’s Hospital asked to help as services are stretched in the aftermath of a week-long heatwave.

Management called in nurses working in other departments to lend a hand at the emergency department when the situation appeared to be spiralling out of control as the influx of patients was well above the norm, according to sources.

At least 11 people died because of heat-related illnesses between Saturday and Tuesday, suffering symptoms of heat exhaustion and dehydration.

Seven of these deaths, recorded on July 24 and July 25, were people aged between 52 and 97, the health authorities said.

According to the National Mortality Register, another two deaths were recorded between July 20 and 21 which indicate dehydration/hyperthermia as the cause of death on the death certificate.

No hyperthermia/dehydration deaths were recorded prior to July 20 this year.

The deaths were recorded as Malta struggled through a heatwave coupled with a series of power cuts lasting days at a time in some places, leaving people struggling to cool themselves in the stifling heat.

Sources said the dire situation filled the emergency waiting room and the corridors around it.

“There’s no space for one more stretcher,” one nurse told Times of Malta.

“People are waiting for hours on end. There were patients who got here at 9am and were treated at 1am the following morning. It’s total chaos here and we can’t cope, even with more staff being brought in from other places,” another hospital worker told Times of Malta.

Sources said most of the people waiting at the emergency department were elderly and frail patients, with many sitting in wheelchairs or on stretchers.

The majority of cases were related to the recent heatwave, with most of them suffering from heat exhaustion, extreme dehydration, breathing complications and septicaemia, which occurs when the body goes into shock. 

The hospital source said the usual triage was being conducted with first attention being given to those who classify as very serious, at the brink of death.

Those classified as serious but who did not require immediate attention were asked to wait, while those who could be treated at a health centre were still treated in hospital.

The waiting times are significantly longer than those usually registered: according to health ministry data, the average waiting time to be seen by staff at Mater Dei's emergency department in February was of just three hours.

'Casualty is choc-a-bloc'

“Casualty is choc-a-bloc. The emergency department is totally overloaded. They opened up corridors and areas never used before for patients as well as other areas that are usually opened to deal with the influx of patients at the height of influenza season,” a doctor told Times of Malta.

“Most of the patients are elderly citizens, some of them coming from homes for the elderly. The elderly, just like young children, are the first to dehydrate in such conditions, apart from facing other difficulties such as breathing. This is over and above their underlying conditions,” another doctor said. 

One source said the ambulance service was also impacted by the sudden increase of call-outs, causing some delays by up to 45 minutes.

One woman who lost her father to heat exhaustion earlier this week said she believed the long wait to be treated could have been a factor that led to his death.

 “My dad, unwell with sepsis and dehydration, passed away unexpectedly at MDH. He had issues, but it’s hard to exclude the 13-hour wait from calling an ambulance to getting therapy as a factor,” the woman told Times of Malta.

500 people at emergency - up from 360

A spokesperson for the Health Ministry said a record 500 people visited the Mater Dei emergency on Tuesday, up from an average of 360 people per day.

Similarly, whereas the 112 emergency number usually receives an average of 150 calls per day, this spiked to more than 250 calls on Tuesday.

The hospital’s emergency department received 102 admissions between Tuesday and Wednesday.

Twenty-six patients were admitted to Mater Dei wards on Tuesday and another 17 on Wednesday. The triage notes from the emergency department used terms like heatstroke, sunstroke, hyperthermia and sunburn.

The spokesperson said that “one elective, non-urgent surgery list” had to be postponed on Thursday.

The ministry thanked the staff “who are working hard to ensure adequate care to all patients, despite the spike in demand”.

Sources said Saint James Hospital’s emergency department also saw an influx of patients, many of whom were fed up with waiting at Mater Dei.