Like, for instance, the three new GU Clinics that Fearne announced back in October 2022 of which the development received radio silence until July 2023 when Lovin Malta asked for an update. The ministry declared that the services will be made available “in the coming months”.

Seeing as around 4 months passed, the newsroom asked for an update once again just a few days ago. The ministry offered a prompt reply, stating that the “Primary Healthcare will start offering GU services from its clinics in the coming month. More details will be announced shortly”.

Better still, before the October 2022 promise, Fearne announced that a number of sexual health services that are currently only available at Mater Dei will, in the future, be provided by health centres and clinics across the country in 2021.

That same year in June, it was reported that GU clinics were to be opened “soon” in Marsaxlokk and “soon after” in Mellieħa; however, this never happened.

Go back another two years, and you’ll find the Health Ministry’s promise to double the personnel of the country’s only public sexual health clinic – yet it remains tragically understaffed with a waiting list that’s backlogged for months.

This trend of promising changes that are made to seem like big wins on the end of the state – even though these are basic needs that are expected to be fulfilled by the government anyway – and then just never going through with them, doesn’t stop at the GU clinic/s.

The sexual health policy was initially intended to be announced back in 2020 but it was pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The minister then assured that the public would receive the policy in March 2021, but that date was also unmet because the research that the new document was based on was found to be around 12 years old.

What makes this even more interesting is that the invalidity of the data wasn’t even found close to the due date. No, it was discovered six months after the policy was meant to be published.

Quite frankly, these frequent statements using vague and unoriginal phrases are just getting old.

It’s become clear that a new sexual health policy is not high up on the agenda – if it makes the cut at all – and neither are three new GU Clinics.

So, either stop promising or start delivering, because Fearne, the public is catching on and we are not impressed.

Do you think that the health ministry overuses empty promises in its political strategy?