Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1315450
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 6 DECEMBER 2020 Stephen Spiteri OPINION A public health emergency GOING back: 7 March 2020, the first active case tested positive for Covid-19 in Malta. This led to the official opening of the first wave on the island. Daily testing, swabbing accelerated with daily numbers increasing. Our neigh- bouring countries, Italy and Spain experiencing a devastat- ing healthcare crisis. A new pandemic, spreading across the globe landing here too! An alarm bell sounding to close all borders could contain the spread. It was late, but finally heard, and our airports were shut. This left us with local transmissions easier to control. Flattening the curve was the aim. A public health emer- gency was set up and proclaimed. We managed to prevent the c a t a s t r o p h i c situations seen all around the globe. It was a victory. Some proclaimed it aloud. We were seen as the best in controlling this pandemic, an eye-opener. The ideal exam- ple of how to do it. Other coun- tries praised our success story. So, with both eyes closed, ears shut, it was business as usual. The term 'second wave' was erased out of our vocabulary, "waves exist only at sea"! Consec- utive days with zero new active cases gave the reassurance to whoever was not listening. Meas- ures crucial to control the spread of the virus were abruptly halted, enjoy the summer, Maltese, now we can do it! That was the mistake: COV- ID-19 was increasing, multiplying, transferring, spreading all around us, ready for the surge to appear, and it happened. Today, we have to cope with the mistake committed earlier in summer. What is happening now? Number of active cases daily average has increased to one hun- dred and fifty compared to the 1st wave. We have daily mortalities, daily additions of infected patients to our hospitals with morbid con- ditions related to the virus. The Intensive Care Unit (ITU) is at full capacity, with critical ventilated patients. The overloaded system, displaced almost all the routine, medical and surgical services in hospital. Emergency surgeries have to wait, operations postponed, out- patients' visits cancelled. Frontliners, our own heroes are exhausted. These doctors, nurs- es, paramedics cannot cope with the load. Their dedication is im- peccable but their physical strength is giving way. We need to help them. This is a red flag, a warning, an anticipation that our health care system can collapse. The writing is on the wall, let's act on time, before the horse escapes. The coming weeks are not easy to control dealing with the COVID and the seasonal flu. It's a first, and we know it can be difficult. The hope of having a vaccine soon is there, but we have to be modest in our perceptions with months ahead, in controlling the spread. We have to be fair and just to our own people. Public health care is our priority. Let us all support this. All the ingredi- ents for a public health emergency are still there, it is in the best in- terest of our nation. It is to protect the most vulnerable, our elderly, those with concurrent illnesses. A public health emergency will em- power, the department of public Health to lead in the true interest and priority our country deserves. This direction will lead us to a vic- tory, a true one this time. said, "is whether the death was a result of natural causes, or whether it could have been avoided. I can say that the ab- solute majority of cases were natural death…" But this is not exactly very 'reassuring', for at least two rea- sons that seem to arise directly out of his own statement. The first is that: regardless how 'absolute' or… erm… 'rel- ative'?... this 'majority' may be: it still means that a 'minority' – however small – were actually 'unnatural deaths'. And … that could mean quite a few things in the specific con- text of a prison: the least of which would certainly warrant a full-scale public inquiry, in most other comparable coun- tries in the world. In the (likeliest, I fear) case of suicide, there are international prison protocols and guide- lines to be followed; but if, on the other hand, we are talking about accidental deaths… like, say, a prisoner electrocuted thanks to a faulty wiring sys- tem… then questions would also have to be asked about the health and safety stand- ards of Corradino prison itself (a building that, at the end of the day, dates back all the way to the Paleo… I mean, Victori- an… era). Drug overdoses, on the other hand, would force us to scruti- nise the prison director's earli- er claims that 'drugs have been eradicated from prison'… not to mention ask questions about the rehab treatment (if any) made available to inmates with drug dependency issues, etc. And this leaves us with the most worrying possibility of all: 'unnatural death' could al- so mean 'murder'… which is not, of course, to suggest that this may indeed have been the cause of death, in any of those 11 deaths. But given that we are, ulti- mately, talking about prison here… and bearing in mind that (without any form of valid jus- tification) the public is still de- nied access to all 11 magisterial inquiry reports: some of which into deaths that occurred two whole years ago… … let's just say it's not a pos- sibility that can exactly be dis- missed out of hand, either. Secondly, Camilleri himself seems to be implying that a public inquiry would only have been warranted, had any of those deaths been 'unnatural'… for all the world as if the State he represents (in this precise instance, anyway) bore no re- sponsibility whatsoever for the general health and well-being of people entrusted to its care: and who have no means – short of escaping, anyhow – to pro- vide for those needs themselves. If so… sorry, but he is very much mistaken. To put it bluntly: if a prisoner dies from entirely natural caus- es, while serving a sentence in Malta's prison… but it turns out that those causes might have been identified, or treat- ed, in time to save his life, with (for instance) better access to healthcare… then it goes with- out saying that the State would certainly bear at least some re- sponsibility for the fatality in question. And I mean that quite literal- ly, by the way. It 'goes without saying'… not just in the sense that I shouldn't even have to be calling for a public inquiry in the first place – it should have been an automatic response, to a situation that would be con- sidered 'troubling' (to say the last) almost anywhere else in the civilised world… … but also because we can't really 'say', with any certainty, that the State is entirely blame- less for any of those 11 deaths, either: certainly not without having something slightly more substantial to base our opin- ions on, than just the 'personal reassurances' of the responsible minister himself. Frontliners, our own heroes are exhausted. These doctors, nurses, paramedics cannot cope with the load. Their dedication is impeccable but their physical strength is giving way Stephen Spiteri is Opposition spokesman for health