20th January 2000: Quality Service Charter launched at Qormi Health Centre

 As reported in The Times of January 21, the 18th Quality Service Charter was launched yesterday at the Qormi Health Centre which caters for 36,000 people in Qormi, Zebbug and Siggiewi. Health Minister Louis Deguara said work on the modernisation and enlargement of the Paola Health Centre would begin this month. The minister said that with the reforms taking place in the health sector, the service provided by the department of primary care would be crucial. The fact that the first quality service charters in the health sector regarded health centres reflected the government's policy that the sectorof primary care should be the basis of the health service in Malta.

He said the success of reforms in the health sector depended on the success of the changes in primary care. Dr Deguara said severl proposals had been made over the years on how the sesctor could be strengthened and reformed. However, for various reasons the formula for a comprehensive primary care service, ensuring not just quality but also continuity, had not yet been found.

Dr Deguara said the government believed that to have a comprehensive primary care service, there had to be full collaboration and cooperation between the services provided by the government and the private sector.

Some 60 per cent of health services were provided by the private sector. Discussions on the required reforms in the sector had been carried out and were still going on. The minister said that despite several difficulties faced by the sector, especially in human resources the public was being served well.

Dr Deguara said the Qormi Health Centre was the first to be built. The Birkirkara centre was then set up and the Cospicual council was modernised. The latter is to be inaugurated on February 1.

There were several other projects underway in health centres and clinics in towns and villages, he said. Dr Deguara said that another Quality Service Charter would this year be launched at the Mosta Health Centre. Deputy Nursing Services Director Josette Scicluna said that in the coming weeks, appointments would be made through a computerised system. She said that the centre recently started offering the service of a medical consultant, so people in the are would not longer have to go to the Floriana Centre.