Public health needs urgent treatment

MORE than any other facet of public service, the country’s health system is desperately in need of an overhaul.

A minefield for successive governments, the ailing service is characterised by hospitals struggling to cope with endless waiting lists and run by under-staffed and over-worked medical teams under a cumbersome health board system bedeviled by bureaucracy and vested interests.

Bringing in private management to control the sprawling public hospital system, would signal the start of radical reforms in a system which persistently fails to give value for tax payers’ money.