St. Luke's Hospital, Malta

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St. Luke's Hospital (in Maltese: Sptar San Luqa), is a general hospital located on Gwardamanġia hill, in Pietà, Malta. Its foundation was laid April 5, 1930, by the Governor of Malta, John du Cane, in the presence of the Prime Minister, Gerald Strickland.

Progress in the construction of the hospital was slow due mainly to technical difficulties encoutered. By 1939, at the outset of the Second World War, the hospital was still incomplete and the work was suspended.

Neverthless, in 1941, the main block was converted into an isolation hospital for infectious diseas. The edifice, now given the official title of St. Luke's Hospital, had to cope with several epidemics ranging from measles to typhoid, typhus, poliomyelitis, scabies and ringworm.

By the late 1940s St. Luke's assumed its current role as a general hospital with facilities for treating general medical, surgical, gynaecological and paediatric cases. In 1948 the radiology department was opened.

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A Maternal and Child Health complex, the Karin Grech Hospital, was built in 1981^[2], and was named after Karin Grech who was killed in 1977 by a letterbomb, and whose father was at that time the head of the department of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

As of late 2007, St.Luke's hospital has ceased to be Malta's main general hospital, having been replaced by the Mater Dei Hospital.