With hindsight, unsurprisingly, some of Dalli’s major recommendations were that Malta should seek to attract medical tourism, that the Gozo General Hospital could be made better use of and Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in healthcare could be a good solution. Freshly returned from his self-imposed medical exile, conveniently after a change in Police Commissioner, Dalli was engaged by Muscat as a consultant on healthcare reform in the country.īy November 2013, Dalli’s report, ‘Mater Dei: a better social return’ was ready. We can start with John Dalli, a former health minister in Malta, in 2013. It is worth taking a look back at how this all started and set the current context in perspective. We may disagree on how this state of affairs came about – our informed view is that this is due to a blend of corruption, greed and sheer incompetence – but at least there is wide agreement that we are at a critical juncture. The government, on the other hand, presumably freed of the toxic trio – Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi – appears torn between scrapping the deal altogether (something Prime Minister Robert Abela referred to last Sunday as “populist”) and materially amending the contract terms to appease Steward (something that would potentially open the concession up to legal challenge). The promised investment was never made, Vitals effectively went bankrupt, Steward is now claiming the company was “pressured” to take over the failed concession (a bizarre claim), that they are owed millions and want to be paid more to boot. So why all this fuss now, pushing information we already know as “revelations” while still omitting key questions that remain unanswered? Neither Steward Healthcare, nor the government, was ever forthcoming with answers to questions sent, let alone a stream of stories for weeks all quoting “government sources” or Steward sources. Spectacularly.īut we’ve known this for a while – The Shift has been investigating and publishing revelations on the hospitals deal for two years. If there is one thing everyone agrees with in relation to the Vitals Global Healthcare / Steward Healthcare concession, it is that this has failed.
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