Dr Anna Mallia does a public service in drawing attention to the functioning of an important organ of state, enjoying a quasi-judicial status in matters affecting the relationship of the ordinary citizen with the medical profession.
As I have often stated in my letters to the press, the Medical Council was set up in 1959 on the insistence of the Maltese medical profession, to make sure that the highest standards of medical practice were available to every person living on these islands.
Such a statutory body would be responsible for the registration of suitably qualified individuals licensed to practice the profession of medicine.
Special legislation would empower it to act as watchdog over the competence and ethical conduct of doctors in the practice of their profession and enable it to deal with complaints from the public regarding perceived serious deficiencies in the treatment given or denied by their medical practitioners,
This was to be the primary role of the Medical Council, and Dr Mallia does right to emphasise it.
The special interests of the doctors was the province of the private professional association set up by the doctors themselves, known as the Medical Association of Malta (MAM).
Scrutiny into the effectiveness of the operation of the Medical Council was one of the more salutary consequences in the aftermath of the 10-year doctor strike called by MAM in 1977.
A small number of doctors, ex-civil servants and journalists exposed the hitherto miserable performance of the Medical Council in the press and urged for its alteration or abolition (Editorial, The Times of Malta: ‘Change or Die’ 6 September 2004).
The result was the replacement of the existing ordinance by the milestone Health Care Professions Act of 2003. For the first time, the lay public was represented on the Council which also for the first time was obliged to give an account of its operation in an Annual Report.
In spite of what these significant changes events have shown (Dr Mallia's recent experience is an example) that the Medical Council is still not fulfilling its primary judicial function satisfactorily. The ordinary citizen remains helpless, without redress in the face of a Medical Council so constituted as to deny the complaining citizen the right to state his case in an open tribunal, or to have his or her case investigated by a special panel wholly separate from the judicial arm of the Medical Council, as recommended by Judge Victor Caruana Colombo, a previous president.
These – apart from such matters as the number of lay persons eligible to the Council, and the manner of appointment of its non elected members – are serious deficiencies awaiting address.
Meanwhile the Medical Council Malta, goes on meting out what a large public considers a travesty of justice.
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