A Maltese nurse is waging a legal battle to have a woman, whom he says is not licensed to practice nursing in her home country, struck off the nurse’s register in Malta and have her license revoked. 

The Filipino national, he says, has been allowed to work in the nursing profession in Malta, despite not having the adequate qualifications. 

Denis Tanti, a registered nurse for the last fifty years, is claiming that the woman, although in possession of a BSc in nursing granted by De Los Santos College in Quezon City in 2007, had not made it through the licensure examination that was a requirement to practise the profession in the Philippines. 

In terms of nursing laws in her homeland, anyone practising the profession without having obtained the licence and identification documents following successful completion of that written exam was liable to a fine varying between 50,000 pesos and 100,000 pesos or imprisonment between one and six years. 

Yet despite lacking these qualifications, her name was included under Level 1 of the Nurses Register in Malta and she was also granted a licence to work. 

This, he claims, is clearly in breach of the Health Professions Act which states that no one may exercise the profession unless that person is a Maltese or European citizen or is otherwise authorised to work in Malta, claimed Tanti in a sworn application filed in court on Friday. 

The application was filed against the Council of Nurses and Midwives, the Health Minister and the woman herself. 

Today’s legal action followed various attempts to strike the nurse’s name off the local register, which have so far proven futile. 

After communicating with the Council, Tanti received an email from the registrar in September 2022 saying that it would review his allegations and seek professional advice on the way forward. 

The Council would then be able to take all necessary action, that the email read. 

But the authorities have failed to take action, even when Tanti followed up his efforts with a judicial protest filed last October. 

Faced with such inaction, Tanti has now instituted legal proceedings claiming that the woman had not passed the licensure exam in the Philippines when her name was included in the nurses’ register in Malta. 

That claim could easily be verified by consulting various online sites which show that the woman’s name did not feature anywhere among the list of candidates who successfully completed the written exam between June 2007 and June 2009, the last exam held before she was put on the Maltese register. 

All this could result in the public losing trust in the nursing profession, claimed Tanti, thus calling upon the First Hall, Civil Court to order the woman’s name to be struck off the register and her licence revoked. 

Lawyer Ann Marie Mangion signed the application.