A new mental health hospital is on track to open by 2025 but it appears the government has no plans to establish an interim facility to take mental health patients from Mount Carmel Hospital, which is deemed unfit for purpose.
A call for tenders is due to be published soon for an eight-ward facility near Mater Dei Hospital, with a capacity for 120 beds and plenty of outdoor space, a Health Ministry spokesperson said.
The “state-of-the-art” facility would also host a day hospital catering for some 25 patients.
However, questions on whether the government has plans for a temporary hospital to host inpatients as an alternative to the state-run Mount Carmel in Attard, until the new hospital is up and running, remained unanswered.
The new hospital would replace Mount Carmel, which has been described as “not fit for purpose” by psychiatrists and whose environment is “far from desirable”, according to Mental Health Commissioner John Cachia.
Times of Malta has reported extensively about the dire state of Mount Carmel. The spotlight was back on it last week when a 20-year-old Dutch woman wrote of her eight-day experience at the facility.
Belle de Jong, who was an inpatient last February, spoke of communal showering reminiscent of concentration camps, dirty and depressing common areas, a chaotic distribution of medication, lack of fresh air and being stripped naked for a drug check.
She has also launched an online petition on change.org called ‘Mount Carmel Hospital: Modernisation of Psychiatric Care in Malta’, garnering nearly a thousand signatures in a few days.
Cachia said much of what de Jong wrote was “regrettably similar to many other patients’ views” and “reflects the findings that my office has been reporting for the past six years”.
This newspaper is informed that nothing much has changed since her release.
Yet the president of the Maltese Association of Psychiatry, Nigel Camilleri, has insisted Malta “desperately” needs a new acute hospital, as Mount Carmel is no place to host patients and staff.
In 2018, Health Minister Chris Fearne had spoken of the new facility being up and running by 2025. But as psychiatrists “eagerly await” the promised hospital, they are calling for an interim solution.
Hospital to cater for 350 staff members, 200 daily visitors
A spokesperson said yesterday that the health ministry was “fully committed to deliver an acute mental health hospital by 2025, and to ensure that it remains relevant and sustainable for many years to come”.
A call for tenders for the provision of consultancy services for the entire design process has been prepared and is due for publication by the Department of Contracts in the coming weeks, she added.
A topographical survey of the site has been completed while the land available for the project should allow for the inclusion of significant outdoor spaces that will be used as part of the therapy.
The hospital will include eight psychiatric wards with a capacity of 120 beds in total, a day hospital catering for the requirements of approximately 25 patients, and multidisciplinary clinical and non-clinical services.
The hospital and all its facilities will also cater for some 350 staff members and around 200 visitors daily.