Calabria, health care is at an end. Now protests mount

After the letter addressed to President Sergio Mattarella by Alessia Piperno, an emergency-urgency doctor on duty in Tropea, the case of the Calabrian health system has gained a great deal of limelight. The words of the 118 doctor, originally from Vibo Valentia, 38 years old, graduated in Messina, qualified in Catanzaro, have given exceptional prominence to the problem: the disastrous picture of a system that no longer holds.

'I grew up in a city that could boast four respectable hospitals, Vibo, Tropea, Soriano Calabro and Serra San Bruno. We had everything,' Piperno writes, 'including the large burns centre, a general surgery department and an emergency surgery department, orthopaedics, general medicine, gynaecology, even the ENT department and many others. We had all the services, President, now there is not much left. Today chaos reigns in Calabria. Departments that are closing, staff that are lacking, non-existent garrisons, and ordinary people forced to emigrate to the north or to turn to private healthcare in order to get treatment. I ask you for help, to protect patients and us health workers. At least you listen to us!'. Practically an invocation.

If until recently the narrative of a seemingly recovering system, guaranteed by the presence of some 500 Cuban doctors and specialists of excellence in some hospital departments, by a new governance, by the slightly increasing Lea, by the budgets of health companies and hospitals certified after decades of oral accounting, by the construction sites of new hospitals (Sibari, Palmi, Vibo), has held up until recently, now that representation is giving way. And while waiting for the exit of the health service from receivership, given 'the willingness of the government, the Prime Minister, the Minister of the Economy, even the technical tables', as announced by the governor of the Calabria Region, Roberto Occhiuto - swept away, immediately afterwards, by a heavy investigation by the Catanzaro public prosecutor's office -, the issue is now heating up the squares: because the health migration does not stop and wards and hospitals are closing. The Cosenza local health authority's budget for 2024 makes a hole of 29 million (the Crotone one loses 500 thousand euro). And proximity medicine is all to be invented.

And so, while Rubens Curia, a retired doctor and regional spokesman for the Competent Community, is fanning the flames of territorial medicine in order to inspire 'a new cultural model that hinges on the democracy of care' and a new operational programme for the Calabrian health service to revitalise services, also taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the Pnrr (which is actually still far behind schedule), in Polistena, on the other hand, after the closure of the reanimation unit of the only spoke, protests are mounting.

Mayor Michele Tripodi, defender of the most important health facility in the Gioia Tauro Plain, whose dismantling he has always feared, had already involved the mayors of neighbouring municipalities in his uprising. But what happened next, that is, a few weeks ago, exceeded expectations, with hundreds of associations and citizens' committees gathered to demand fairer healthcare, as never before. Everything was organised from the bottom up, with the coordination of Marisa Valensise, an expert witness at the Palmi court, president of a cooperative of social welfare services and of the Polistena Health Committee. She started by denouncing anomalies in some calls for tenders by the Reggio Calabria health authority, then courageously called a public assembly, and finally animated the 'Calabria alza la testa' (Calabria raises its head) demonstration: almost 2,500 people, ordinary people, politicians, CGIL exponents, activists for the right to care, who arrived by bus from all over the region, filled Piazza Prefettura in Catanzaro. The local newspaper Quotidiano del Sud supported the initiative. Present, together with some regional councillors, were the Pd MEP Sandro Ruotolo, the Five Star MEP Anna Laura Orrico, and the former President of the Calabria Region Mario Oliverio, who knows the system well, but was never allowed to become the Calabrian health commissioner ad acta.