PN’s healthcare plans will take us back decades, Chris Fearne warns
Labour was reacting to PN's €600 million healthcare plan presented on Thursday morning
Updated 5.34pm with PN response
PN’s plans for the healthcare sector turn the clock back by two decades, former health minister Chris Fearne warned.
Fearne was speaking during a press conference held on Thursday afternoon, shortly after PN leader Alex Borg presented the opposition’s plans to revamp Malta’s healthcare sector. The incumbent health minister, Jo Etienne Abela, was not present at the press conference.
On Thursday morning, Borg unveiled a €600 million plan to build new hospitals in Gozo and in the north of Malta, and to expand the Ċensu Moran hub in Paola.
However, Fearne warned, these proposals will “take the country back to the era of GonziPN”.
“Before 2013, we had big problems in healthcare, as a result of poor decisions taken at the time,” he said.
“These proposals repeat those same mistakes”.
Fearne argued that PN’s proposals reflect an outdated model reliant on tertiary care, requiring people to visit a hospital for their care needs.
“The model of going to hospitals for all types of care was the GonziPN model, but things have changed now,” Fearne said, pointing to how primary care within the community has come to play a central role in Malta’s healthcare system.
PN’s proposals offered nothing when it comes to primary care, he said, bar a proposal to turn the Ċensu Moran hub into a fully-fledged hospital.
“So they’re effectively proposing to cut down on primary care,” Fearne argued.
“If we make the mistake of killing primary care we will have a disaster in the healthcare sector,” he warned.
Fearne also slammed PN’s proposal to offer incentives to healthcare workers working abroad to return to Malta, saying it places people who served abroad over those who dedicated their lives to treating local patients.
It also effectively means that the government will have to offer the same incentives to EU nationals working abroad, Fearne said, with EU law forbidding any differential treatment between Maltese and other EU nationals.
“So we will be giving precedence to any EU healthcare worker above local healthcare workers,” Fearne said.
He also said PN’s proposed introduction of nurse navigators is several years too late, with the system already having been introduced back in 2017 and described as a model for other countries by the World Health Organisation.
Meanwhile, Labour MP Glenn Bedingfield said the oppositions proposal to eliminate single permits for foreign workers in the healthcare sector runs counter to Borg’s previous calls to cut down on foreign workers.
Pointing to PN’s “confusion” over its pledges, Bedingfield said the party had not said where the proposed hospitals would be located, nor how they will be staffed.
The Nationalist Party rebutted the PL's claims insisting that what their proposals "will not do is set the country back €900 million of the people’s money", with reference to the failed hospitals deal.