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A claim that five elderly people at St Vincent de Paule died of heat stress also ended up in the partisan arena, with government and opposition contradicting each other about what should be a matter of objective medical analysis. But suffering in the heat-stricken wards remains. Karl Schembri reports
A faint breeze makes the stifling heat slightly more bearable, although the sight of frail elderly people sitting in the corridors gasping for air and others confined to their beds, some panting, some comatose, makes for depressing viewing.
As Malta sweltered through its hottest days last month with the temperature soaring to 40 degrees, wards at the largest state residence for the elderly, St Vincent de Paule, had the air conditioning system down and some units are still out of order.
Walking along the corridors of male wards 7 and 8 and St Joseph female wards 15 and 16, it is not just the overwhelming heat affecting the elderly sitting in front of fans placed here and there that strikes the visitor, but also the gross unfairness of the discrimination taking place within the same retirement home, where other residents live in much more modern halls.
The situation triggered a political ping-pong of serious allegations and counter-statements that, as usual, leave the public none the wiser.
Last Tuesday, the Labour Party’s spokesmen on social solidarity and the elderly claimed that five people residing at St Vincent de Paule died of heat strain within two days, in wards where air conditioning was faulty or, even worse, non-existent.
According to Opposition MPs Marie Louise Coleiro Preca and Silvio Parnis, relatives of residents at the state home had to provide fans for their elderly “amid persistent rumours that five elderly people died of heat strain” between 25 and 27 June. Their claims were repeated in a statement yesterday, insisting that five women died of hyperthermia and adding that two out of eight mobile air conditioners, although just bought, were already faulty.
The statement was shocking and wishy-washy at the same time, prompting me to call the two MPs to ask them directly how they got the information and how reliable it was.
“Air conditioning was out of order during the worst days of the heat wave,” Coleiro Preca said. “The information we have is that five people died because of the heat stress, and when I said it publicly nobody from the government came out saying it was untrue.”
That does not mean that what she said was true, yet admittedly it was serious enough to warrant an immediate reply. Again, her sources remained obscure, short of a clear medical certificate indicating death of heat stress.
“My informants are people who know well what’s going on there, but we’ll never know for sure unless the victims are subjected to autopsies,” she said.
Parnis gave me similar comments but he also gave me the telephone number of a man whose 81-year-old mother was one of the five they had referred to.
“It’s always the same problem in summer – the air condition goes off just when it is most badly needed,” the man said. “I attribute my mother’s death to the heat. It was just miserable, she couldn’t get any respite from it. I visited her on a Sunday; she seemed restless and disoriented and was sweating, her neck slightly bent. The nursing officer told me she would be visited the day after by a doctor and told me it was probable she had an inflamed nerve. Then I was called the next day and was told she had died. The death certificate said she died of pulmonary edema, a sort of chest infection, but nurses tell me the heat just precipitates matters in cases of chest infection. In any case, how was she diagnosed with chest infection only after she died?”
Parliamentary Secretary for the Elderly, Helen D’Amato, did not delve much into the alleged heat fatalities. She did not even comment on Tuesday when I contacted her about the opposition statement, but her public relations officer sent a press release the next day boasting of more than Lm150,000 spent on air conditioning and a new tender just issued to spend more.
“Wherever there is no air conditioning or it is temporarily out of order, all the precautions possible are being taken to lessen the inconvenience, like the provision of fans, water and ice … in the last week, from a population of over 1,000 elderly people, 11 died in halls that are not air conditioned and their deaths are not attributed to heat.”
Medics, however, say heat can be an invisible killer.
“Nobody comes with ‘heat stroke’ written on his forehead,” a nurse in one of the halls said.
The president of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses Paul Pace said: “What I can confirm definitely is that there was a breakdown in the air conditioning system in many wards at St Vincent de Paule, and the heat was terrible. Unfortunately old people, especially the bed-ridden ones, can get conditions of hyperthermia, high temperatures, and it can kill. I don’t know the numbers of people who died of that, but that’s just why air conditioning was installed there, because heat is a life-threatening situation for our patients. So when you have a breakdown in the air conditioning you might get deaths, of course. I can’t say five, six or 10 people died. People there could already be sick and the heat just makes it worse, like the straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
A lonely old man sitting next to an open window in ward 7 looked at me on my way out.
“It’s hot here, isn’t it?” I asked him.
“It’s been worse. What can we do? We’ll have to wait here till the Saviour calls us.”
For them, state-of-the-art Mater Dei will remain just a live television event, a ceremony worthy of a gathering of ministers and fireworks.
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