Opinion: Carmen Ciantar’s blood letting

Kim Jong-Il had a supernatural birth upon a sacred mountain amidst rainbows. He could walk by three weeks old and talk at eight, he wrote 1500 books in three years and composed six operas.  Kim Jong-Un was a child genius who could drive a car by age three.  The world envies North Korean prosperity.

These are just a few examples of the wildly fanciful claims North Korean propaganda pushes as fact. But if you think that propaganda is hilarious, try reading a sponsored article by Carmen Ciantar.

Ciantar is one of Labour’s highest-paid persons of trust, earning €163,000 annually. She is Chris Fearne’s campaign manager who notoriously suspended herself and then suspended her own self-suspension.

She’s meant to be the CEO of the Foundation for Medical Services (FMS), but when campaign duty called, she allegedly abandoned her FMS post, taking her personal secretary, Stephanie Dimech, with her to run Fearne’s election campaign and then his deputy leadership campaign.

Yet despite her obscenely exorbitant remuneration, she keeps making a fool of herself and the institution she represents. She’s giving Kim Jong Un a run for his money in the propaganda stakes, as you can see by the insane level of hyperbole in her article, prefaced with the bombastic title: “Foundation for Medical Services unveils a healthcare revolution”.

What was this healthcare revolution that Carmen Ciantar was bragging about?

Unbelievably, a small health centre was inaugurated in sleepy Victoria, Gozo, but you wouldn’t know it by reading her introduction.

“In an ever-evolving landscape of healthcare, a silent catalyst is at work creating a bridge between a healthcare design, environmental consciousness and the diverse needs of our society. FMS stands at the forefront of this transformation, advocating for innovative healthcare facilities that prioritise not only patient wellness but also the wellbeing of our planet and the inclusivity of all individuals”.

What’s so revolutionary about a small health centre? They’ve been around since Mintoff’s polyclinics in the 1980s, but Ciantar thinks she’s “at the forefront” of saving “our planet”.

But this is more than just any health centre. According to the megalomaniacal Ciantar, this is “a paradigm shift in Gozo’s healthcare landscape”, and she insists she’s “pioneering a healthcare horizon in Gozo”.

So what’s so special about it? “The chosen location is more than geography, it is about accessibility and proximity to the community it serves”.

For heaven’s sake, this is Gozo we’re talking about – all nine by 4.5 miles of it, where you could throw a stone from one end to the other.

But hang on, there’s more, wait for it. The New Victoria Health Centre even has a “new elevator which further emphasises the dedication to ease of access”.

It’s truly amazing – a new health facility which even has a lift. A genuine revolution, no wonder we’re paying Ciantar €163,000.

She even bragged that toilets had been installed in that health centre. 

“The design, plumbing, electrical systems and safety features are not mere afterthoughts; they are carefully orchestrated elements ensuring seamless healthcare delivery and an excellent workspace for its staff”, Ciantar bluffed.

This reads like a Monty Python sketch. How does having a toilet and a wash-hand basin “ensure seamless healthcare delivery”? And “an excellent workspace for its staff”? Did she expect the staff to walk up to it-Tokk to relieve themselves in the public toilets?

Ciantar insisted that the health centre would be “revolutionising service at the heart of the community”. How?

She bragged that “far beyond a mere upgrade, this health-centre haven introduces a spectrum of services promising a new era of healthcare excellence”.

Those amazing new services include “the traditional GP and nursing offerings”, “a diabetes clinic”, and bizarrely “blood-letting clinics”. Is she procuring leeches for that purpose?

Blood-letting is not revolutionary, it is one of medicine’s oldest and most discredited practices, which began with the Ancient Egyptians over 3000 years ago. It was used in the medieval ages as treatment for plague and smallpox and in the 18^th century for fever and inflammation of the lungs. It’s been mostly abandoned, except in very rare specific situations, because it is harmful to patients and killed thousands. 

Yet, Ciantar is bragging that she’s introducing the medieval practice to Gozo and hailing it as revolutionary.

The only thing that’s revolutionary here is how Gozo was promised a new 450-bed state-of-the-art hospital, its own cardiac angiosuite, and hundreds of new jobs. Instead, it has been given a small clinic with the most basic services and the medieval practice of bloodletting for good measure.

That’s like being promised a top-of-the range performance sports car and instead being given a Matchbox toy version of the vehicle – with the added insult that the CEO is trying to convince you that the Matchbox version is even better than the Ferrari you were promised.

And to add insult to injury, she called the opening of the health centre “a realisation of the Gozitan community’s hopes”.  I guess Gozitans have learned not to expect Labour’s wild promises to be kept and toned down their “hopes” accordingly.

Ciantar’s wild claims are nothing short of hilariously ridiculous – “a beacon of health innovation”, “triumph over adversity”, “a journey to excellence”, “a saga of triumph over challenges”, and “an unwavering commitment to the community’s well-being”.

She referred to the health centre’s  “current pinnacle of achievement” before it even started functioning.

“It signifies a strategic shift to alleviate the burden on Gozo’s sole hospital”, “it pioneers a revolution where innovation, accessiblity and sustainability converge for the holistic well being of the community”, she concluded.

What is truly disturbing is that this is the Foundation for Medical Services CEO. She thinks providing “the traditional GP and nursing offerings” is innovative.

She believes that the harmful medieval practice of blood-letting is revolutionary. She maintains that having water and electricity in a health facility ensures “seamless healthcare delivery”. What’s even more distressing is that we’re paying her €163,000 for this drivel.

Editor’s Note: Our research found that Ciantar’s article was generated by ChatGPT, a free generative AI tool which can write articles based on instructions and prompts from a user. Based on scores from three separate AI detectors, 64% and 90% of the article was generated using ChatGPT.