By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 19 September 2014:
Malta has, in the past month and and a half, taken over 100 Libyans wounded . . .[restrict]in fighting in and around Tripoli, a senior Maltese official has told the Libya Herald. In the past week alone, he said, ten people wounded in the fighting in the Washefana area have been flown for treatment in Malta.
However, Maltese hospitals have now reached saturation point, according to the official. “The hospitals are full. We can’t take any more,” he said.
The Maltese have taken wounded from both sides in the fighting. “We are neutral”, he stressed. Need was the sole criteria, he insisted, but added that once in Malta the wounded were being treated in different hospitals. “The Zintanis gone to St James Hospital in Zabbar [in the south east of the island] while Misratans and Libya Dawn have been sent to the main Mater Dei Hospital and to St James Hospital Capua [in Sliema].”
During the 2011 revolution and the immediate aftermath, the Maltese took in hundreds of Libyan wounded, causing some friction on the island where at times there are shortages of hospital beds for locals. Two months ago, after fighting started in Tripoli between Libya Dawn and Zintani forces and wounded started again to arrive on the island, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses called on the Maltese government not to bring over Libyan patients from Libya if it resulted in there being insufficient nurses or equipment available for Maltese patients.
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