GSD Questions Hospital Bed Capacity After Reports Of Patients Moved To Maternity Ward
The GSD is calling on the Government to explain reports that long-stay patients at St Bernard’s Hospital have been moved to the maternity ward, raising concerns about hospital bed capacity and patient safety.
A statement from the GSD follows below:
The GSD demands urgent answers from the Government following reports that a number of long-stay patients at St. Bernard’s Hospital have been moved into the maternity ward. If confirmed, it raises questions about Minister Arias-Vasquez’s position that bed shortages have been a thing of the past, about whether the hospital can accommodate all in-patients safely and what is being done to address the ongoing capacity issues.
Joelle Ladislaus, Shadow for Health said: “For years we have raised the question of bed shortages at St. Bernard’s Hospital, and the Minister for Health has persistently minimised the issues that staff and patients are experiencing. The answers provided in Parliament and in press releases that bed shortages are a thing of the past do not appear to reflect the reality of the situation when there are vulnerable patients being admitted to A & E, waiting hours for a bed to become available, surgical cancellations and now elderly, long-stay patients being moved into a maternity ward.
In response to questions which I asked in Parliament on 27 November 2024, the Minister for Health said that “the action plan when wards are at capacity is to move patients to other clinical areas or other GHA facilities. There are wards, for example maternity and Rainbow Ward, which cannot be used. Obviously, you cannot mix adults and children, so there are certain wards that cannot be used for these purposes, but the plans which the GHA has in place do allow for patient movement around different wards.”
More recently, in February 2026, the Minister acknowledged in Parliament that patients had been admitted to Calpe ward, which is an infection control ward, for bed-capacity reasons. Yet, in August 2026, the Director General, Dr Paul Bosio, told the Gibraltar Chronicle that the GHA does not really have bed capacity issues and had not experienced a bed crisis during his 5 months in post.
It is bad enough that patients are having to be admitted to A & E or that they have been admitted to Calpe Ward in recent months and that there are recurring reports of long waits for admission. To now apparently reach the stage where adult patients are being moved to a specialist ward where there are newborn babies, in apparent breach of the usual protocols according to the Minister’s past comments, suggests serious capacity issues at St. Bernard’s Hospital and greater pressure on acute hospital beds than the Government has previously acknowledged.”
The GSD is not questioning the professionalism of our dedicated healthcare workers, who continue to provide care regardless of the challenges which they are faced with. The responsibility lies with the Government to provide the resources necessary, adequate facilities and appropriate bed capacity, and safe patient and staff ratios. There are legitimate questions about whether long-stay patients were placed in an area shared with mothers and their newborns, what infection-control measures and safeguarding structures have been put in place, and why this decision had to be taken. The public deserves no less than full transparency.
