Mosta: cars are not being allowed to reach the health centre during the festivities

This morning I received the following email.

Last night I was working at Mosta Health Centre and traffic management was a disaster. Roads were closed from near Lord Nelson restaurant (witnessed by myself) up to Casa Arkati (according to patients).

MY NOTE: Constitution Street is actually closed much further beyond Casa Arkati, right at the end at the Targa Gap roundabout. I know because I have to contend with this myself.

Patients were not allowed to enter the restricted area by car and so had to walk a long way before getting to the health centre.

Two examples of such patients were a gentleman with a badly twisted ankle, which fortunately turned out not to be broken, and a distressed toddler with shortness of breath who I referred to hospital.

The boy’s father was told by a policeman at the barrier near Lord Nelson restaurant that he couldn’t risk him driving through the crowds of people because he would be distracted by worry about his son. That policeman didn’t consider the boy’s health, though, which was quite poor. The parents had to find parking and walk quickly to the health centre, and then take the boy all the way back to the car so as to take him to hospital.

Access for ambulances was also very limited, though luckily we didn’t need to call one while I was on duty. However, apparently it was a nightmare for the ambulance to pass through about an hour before my shift started at 8pm.

Any urgent house visits we received were directed to Mater Dei Hospital because all our (doctors’) cars were parked far away. It would have taken us 20 minutes to walk to our cars, another five to 10 minutes to get out of the jammed traffic and then we still had to drive to the patient’s house. We were originally assigned alternative reserved parking but yesterday all placards, stating that such spaces were reserved, were removed.

I don’t mind walking to my car, but emergency calls could definitely not be carried out yesterday, so the area covered by the Mosta Health Centre lost the service yesterday.

This was the first year with such problems. Patients who can’t walk or require urgent treatment used to be allowed through, a specific route for ambulances used to be worked out, and doctors’ parking used to be reserved.

If you’d like to report this, please keep me anonymous as we were only five doctors and three nurses on shift.