Waiting Lists
Every now and then you receive that phone call which makes you shiver and feel helpless. This week a lady called me and as soon as I replied the voice I heard was very meek and frail. It turned out that this was no old woman at all but a forty year old in great pain. She explained that during the last years she underwent several operations and treatments for different problems and ailments she has. It is the kind of situation when you solve one problem and then another one crops up from nowhere.
This lady told me that her doctor wanted her to do an MRI and in fact referred her to Mater Dei hospital. She said that she saw the doctor filling in the referral form and saw him put in capital and underline the word ‘URGENT’.
He explained to her that it would take her at least a couple of months to get an appointment from Mater Dei.
After the lapse of three months this lady decided to check at Mater Dei herself. So she phoned, furnished her identity card number and was given a great shock. Her appointment was scheduled for April 2009 meaning that she has to wait for another seven months to have her MRI. She was panic stricken because she would have to wait for all these long months to be tested and have her ailments targeted.
Seven months are quite a long time and if there is something which needs to be addressed to immediately then it is futile to say that in seven months’ time it may be too late. We have had innumerable cases of cancer which were only screened when it was too late because of the delay due to the long waiting lists. We have a state of the art hospital but so far we did not manage to take the bull by the horns with regards to the waiting list saga. The worst thing which may be imparted to a patient is that the ailment was detected too late and that at such a late stage nothing can be done. It is an intolerable situation to have people with cancer needing to be screened every so often per year and then they are given appointments more than a year apart.
We were always taught that prevention is better than cure. In the present situation however we cannot prevent adequately. It is imperative that this waiting list problem be addressed. Everybody in the country now is aware of this fact but this alone does not solve the problems and the pain many people are going through. Even psychologically not knowing what you might have is devastating and may even lead to psycho-somatic conditions. This state of mind may be addressed by doing a simple test but why does it have to take months to be done?
