MMDNA - Malta Memorial District Nursing Association

Abstract

From time immemorial, members of religious orders, both male and female, have nursed the poor in their homes as occasion offered. In Britain, in 1859, an experiment by William Rathbone of Liverpool, led to the establishment in that city of an organised service of trained district nurses, badly needed at the time, because of the poverty and squalour in which the majority existed. This, in due course, led to the founding of the Queen’s Institute of District Nursing (Q.I.D.N.). This in turn, provided the first qualified nurses when MMDNA was founded in 1945, to provide an organised Home Nursing and Midwifery service for the Maltese Islands. MMDNA is now well established and has been entrusted by the Department of Health to provide an important part of the National Health Services for these Islands; MMDNA nurses and midwives visit over a thousand homes a day.