The official bathing season for Malta will start next Monday 14th May 2012 and the Environmental Health Directorate will also starts its monitoring programme for bathing water quality.

This monitoring programme is carried out in line with the provisions laid down by the EU Directive 2006/7/EC during the official bathing season which locally will be run between next Monday 14th May till 21st October 2012.

This monitoring programme is a well structured and detailed process, designed to focus on ensuring the highest level of public health protection.

Monitoring of the 87 designated bathing sites around Malta, Gozo and Comino involves long hours of sample collection, testing, analysis at the Public Health Laboratory Services and data collection, not to mention the immediate actions that need to be taken if there are any doubts at all as to the quality of the bathing water under scrutiny.

The tests conducted by the Environmental Health Directorate during site monitoring are based on microbiological parameters as required by law and these samples are analysed for traces of two particular bacteria which can give rise to infections in humans i.e. E. coli and intestinal enterococci.

Data collected following sampling is analysed in accordance to the classification provisions by the same directive and each site is classified in accordance to its quality which can range from Excellent Quality, to Good Quality, Sufficient Quality or in the worse case scenario Poor Quality.

Throughout the years there has always been an improvement in the bathing water quality, with 95 per cent of all bathing sites being classified as of Excellent Quality for the 2010 bathing season. The official data for the 2011 bathing season is still to be officially published but will probably be as good as previous years.

The Environmental Health Directorate urges the public to co-operate by keeping our beaches clean and to report to the directorate if any discharges are noticed so that immediate action can be initiated by the Environmental Health Officers to be able to rectify any probable problems as soon as possible so that there would not be the need to temporarily close any of the bathing areas throughout the season.

The Environmental Health Directorate takes this opportunity to remind the public that it can contact the Health Inspectorate Services between 8:00am and 3:00pm on telephone number 21337333, by calling personally at its offices at 37-39, Rue D’Argens, Msida or by email complaints.ph@gov.mt.

For updates on this years bathing water season, the public is also encouraged to visit the Directorate’s website at URL: https://ehealth.gov.mt/HealthPortal/public_health/environmental health/department_for_env_health.aspx or on its facebook page on http://www.facebook.com/pages/Environmental-Health-Directorate-Malta/145027878928626

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