Now, with a supposedly progressive party in power, the sexual health policy remains untouched amidst a national desire to update it.

In fact, in 2018, the Women’s Rights Foundation had launched a position paper to update sexual and reproductive rights urging for the revision of the national sexual health strategy “to reflect legal and societal changes occurring since 2011”.

Former Parliamentary Secretary for Equality and Reforms Rosianne Cutajar had assured Lovin Malta that a new sexual health policy was in the works for the end of 2020.

She said that the debate on whether the contraceptive pill should be on the list of essential medicines will be addressed in a new sexual health policy to be launched that year.

Lo and behold, three years later, the oral contraceptive pill remains officially ‘unessential’ while the sexual health policy reaches the tender age of 13.

It must be noted that the Health Minister Chris Fearne attributed the delay to the need to prioritise COVID-19 pandemic and assured that the policy would be made available by the first half of the following year.

Nonetheless, 2021 came and left without any significant change to Malta’s sexual health policy.

As a matter of fact, March of 2021 was meant to be inaugurated with a newly updated SHP however in October of that year, the public was notified that the SHP was being redrafted because the data that it was based on was found to be around 12 years old.

Therefore, researchers had to restart by carrying out new studies to understand the recent sexual practices and trends.

Moreover, the fact that such studies weren’t carried out back when the new policy was announced implies that the research hadn’t even been considered until October 2021 – seven months after the supposed due date.

One major sore point of the SHP and strategy that continues to largely impact Maltese people is the state of the national Genitourinary (GU) Clinic.

Malta, a country with over 500,000 people, has only one state-funded GU Clinic and this has caused excessively long waiting lists – with appointments generally being given six months after the initial call.

Promises to introduce GU services in the community have been made by the government. In 2021, it was reported that GU clinics were to be opened in Marsaxlokk and Mellieħa. This proposal was repeated in the Budget speech, last October. However, so far, this has not materialised.

Besides this, the clinic is depressingly understaffed while the demand for services more than doubled in the ten year period between 2011 and 2021. This further adds to the waiting time, the strain on our public health workers, and the high STI rates recorded on the islands.

Similarly to the SHP, the government has been promising the introduction of GU services in the community since at least 2021. Such a proposal was repeated in the national 2023 Budget speech of last October but this has not materialised.

In fact, Lovin Malta sent questions to the Health Ministry to which it responded that “the coming months” will see the introduction of community clinics that will be providing GU medical care in Marsaxlokk, Mellieħa, and the Victoria Health Centre in Gozo.

Let’s hope that this will actually happen this time.

Do you think that the national sexual health policy should be updated?