The black August of attacks in health care, one per day

From punches and kicks to actual sexual assaults. In the last three years in Italy there has been a 40 per cent increase in episodes of physical and psychological violence against women working in healthcare. And the current one is 'a nightmarish summer, with an average of aggressions never so high, reaching numbers never recorded in the last 10 years'. This is what emerges from an analysis by the Association of doctors of foreign origin in Italy (Amsi), which stresses that from 1 to 20 August there was not a single day when a doctor or nurse did not suffer violence.

And in 80% of cases the victim was a woman. We are talking about aggression, both physical and psychological, but also discrimination against female professionals of foreign origin, which has seen a 35% increase in recent months in Italy. In most cases the perpetrators are patients or their relatives.

As for the contexts in which the episodes occur, in first place there are the first aid, in second place 118 interventions, and in third place psychiatric wards. "Accomplicated by the inefficiencies and shortcomings of hospitals," explains Foad Aodi, president of Amsi, "doctors and nurses pay for the dissatisfaction of citizens, who have reached the point of exasperation. Politics must do its part with targeted laws. But the mentality of citizens must also be changed'.

Wild West scenes were seen last week in Crotone, where a woman kicked and punched two nurses and two doctors in the emergency room. While the two doctors working in emergency rooms attacked in Apulia within a few days, in Minervino di Lecce, in the Salento region, and in Maruggio, in the Taranto region, are only the latest in a long series. The situation, which has been denounced for years by both trade unions and orders, had had a paradoxical escalation precisely during the Covid-19 pandemic and last summer had led the Ministers of Health and Home Affairs, Orazio Schillaci and Matteo Piantedosi, to pledge to increase police garrisons in hospitals and emergency rooms. But in fact, 'despite the tightening of penalties, the qualification of public officials for health officials, controls, police stations, nothing stops the maelstrom. Public opinion continues to see health workers as responsible for the difficulty of access to care,' explains Pierino Di Silverio, secretary of Anaao, the hospital doctors' union. An exasperated situation that has led to the provocation launched by Ludovico Abbaticchio, president of the Italian doctors' union (Smi) to 'arm' those who work in the wards to counter the escalation.

The alarm does not only concern Italy, but the whole of Europe, and is increasing exponentially in developing countries. In the world, according to the Amsi survey carried out together with Unione Medica Euromediterranea and Uniti per Unire, there has been a 42% increase in aggression against health professionals. In Europe, 40% of them have suffered at least one assault, and in developing countries the percentage among women reaches 95%. One striking case concerned India, where the entire health system was paralysed for days by a massive doctors' strike that was triggered after the lifeless body of a female resident, brutally tortured and killed after rape, was found in a corridor of a public hospital in Calcutta on 9 August.