Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/742473
8 maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 26 OCTOBER 2016 News Dwarna with Mariella Dimech every Tuesday at 21.00 on TVM2 Emergency contraception set to be available at Mater Dei for rape victims Health minister Chris Fearne says emergency contraception will be made available at Mater Dei for rape victims, once it has been licensed by the Medicines Authority TIM DIACONO EMERGENCY contraception will be made available at Ma- ter Dei for free for rape victims, health minister Chris Fearne has confirmed. Fearne told MaltaToday that once the pills have been licensed by the Medicines Authority, they will eventually be added to the government formulary list for medicines and be stocked at the national hospital. "Once it is licensed, pharma- cies and doctors will be able to request that the pill be added to the government formulary. The request will then be analyzed by the Government's Formulary List Advisory Committee, and if approved it will then be up to a health benefits board to decide whether there are enough public funds available to purchase it. However, in this case, the medi- cine is cheap so I don't foresee a problem in this regard." The Medicines Authority ruled last week that emergency con- traceptives containing the ac- tive ingredients Levonorgestrel and Ulipristal be made available over the counter. MA chairman Anthony Serracino Inglott said that the decision was based on the fact that the pill's efficiency hinges greatly on it being ingest- ed as quickly as possible. He later urged the health au- thorities to keep a stock of emer- gency contraception available at Mater Dei for rape victims. "Rape victims have a right to access emergency contraception at hospital. What if a woman is raped late at night? Will she have to search across Malta to find an open pharmacy, perhaps go to the airport pharmacy and hope that the person behind the counter isn't a conscientious ob- jector?" The morning-after pill de- bate was sparked last June after a woman's rights organisation filed a judicial protest to demand its importation to Malta, in what pro-life groups claimed was an attempt to legalise abortion. Fol- lowing several heated sittings, MPs at a joint family, health and social affairs committee rec- ommended that the pill should only be made available against a doctor's prescription, leading hundreds of people to take to the streets in Valletta in protest. However, the Medicines Author- ity ultimately decided to ignore the MPs' advice and ruled that the pill be made available over the counter. tdiacono@mediatoday.com.mt Emergency contraception will be made available for free at Mater Dei Italian navy officers investigated over drowning of 300 asylum seekers in Maltese waters JURGEN BALZAN ITALIAN navy officers are facing prosecution over the drowning of some 300 asylum seekers after the officers failed to respond promptly to SOS calls in a rescue mission in Maltese territorial waters in 2013. In a damning report published in 2014, Amnesty International had said that some 200 people pre- sumed to have died in the Lampe- dusa shipwreck in October 2013 could have been saved if Italian and Maltese authori- ties had not dithered over rescue opera- tions. In a tragedy which shook the world, the Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) rescued 147 peo- ple, Italian vessels picked up another 39, while the other pas- sengers were never found. Now, prosecutors in Rome are investi- gating Italian officers suspected of culpable homicide over their failure to provide assistance to a sinking boat, on which at least 268 people are believed to have died. A Freedom of Information request by MaltaToday on the details of the rescue mission that had first been refused by the AFM was also re- jected by the Information and Data Protection Commissioner. The boat, which left Syria with 480 aboard including more than 100 children, sank about 100km south of Lampedusa and 217km from Malta, but in Maltese territorial waters. The Italian navy has faster vessels but responsibility for the incident was passed to the Maltese authori- ties, which dispatched one of the Armed Forces of Malta's patrol boats, which was further from the scene than Italian navy vessels. Among the officers under formal investigation is Lieutenant Catia Pellegrino, the commander of the patrol vessel Libra, who was award- ed a presidential medal of honour for her role in rescuing people in the Mediterranean. On 11 October, 2013, Italian res- cuers allegedly delayed respond- ing to calls for help from a fishing boat crowded with refugees from Syria because of a bureaucratic tangle. The Maltese boat arrived at 5.51pm, by which time the refugees had been in the water for 40 minutes and most of the children were dead. Pellegrino's vessel, which had not initially been ordered to respond, arrived shortly after. Italy's failure to respond was condemned by one of the survivors, a doctor from Aleppo who lost two young sons in the trag- edy. Mohamad Jammo said he first called the Italian coastguard at 11am after the fishing boat had been shot at by a Libyan patrol boat. "We asked for help and for an hour and a half nothing happened. Only afterwards they told us to call the Maltese navy. So two vital hours were lost," Jammo told L'Espresso, an Italian magazine. When Jammo called for a third time at 1pm, Italian officials told him to call Malta, gave him the number and hung up, he said. A Lampedusa shipwreck survivor with his daughter upon their arrival in Malta. The rest of his family perished in the shipwreck PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRIS MANGION