Molise without doctors does like Calabria: white coats arrive from Cuba

Venezuelan doctors arrived in Molise during the Covid emergency to cope with the shortage of staff in the regional hospitals, and now new 'reinforcements' of white coats from Cuba are planned to ensure the presence of professionals in the region. This is what has been announced by the President of the Region, Francesco Roberti, in an attempt to remedy a situation that approaches the paradoxical.

Molise, which has been grappling with the health deficit recovery plan since 2007 and has been under commissioner status since 2009, continues to be unattractive even for young doctors. An emergency that reverberates on the functionality of hospital departments and, consequently, in being able to guarantee essential levels of care. Deserted competitions, recourse to retired doctors and foreign professionals, agreements with health authorities and facilities outside the region, crystallise the situation in which, for years, the regional public health service has been forced. In 2019, the then Commissioner ad Acta for health, Angelo Giustini, also hypothesised the use of retired military doctors in order "to overcome this agonic stalemate in the governance of the regional health service and the right to equity and universality of access for citizens".

'Without doctors, you cannot do healthcare,' Roberti said. 'The agreement with the Cuban doctors, on the model already experimented in Calabria, represents a concrete idea to ensure the presence of a necessary number of professionals capable of reaching every corner of Molise.

A solution, however, that the national secretary of Ugl Salute, Gianluca Giuliano, does not like. It is 'a buffer solution that does not address the real nodes of the public health crisis'. 'It is not acceptable,' he explains, 'that in a country like Italy we do not seriously invest in internal staff, preferring to resort to extemporary solutions. We need stable contracts, adequate salaries, better working conditions and concrete incentives, so as to stop the flight abroad and towards the private sector of Italian doctors and nurses'.

It is precisely for this reason that Governor Roberti looks to the future and bets on the role of the University of Molise. "We are training young doctors in the specialisations that are currently lacking in our hospitals, and in the next five years Unimol trainees will be able to enter, grow professionally, and at the same time strengthen Molise's healthcare system. Eighteen years under the Deficit Recovery Plan and sixteen under the commissioner's management, therefore, have not helped to restore the deficit and bring the regional health system out of the doldrums. 'We have inherited a flawed planning and a disastrous situation,' Roberti commented, 'on which action must be taken. It is hard to understand how, with the elimination of the old ASLs and the introduction of a single health authority, costs and, consequently, debt have increased,' he said. For the governor, this situation is also 'the result of a system that in the past has defended caste logic, without looking to the future of the territories and the new generations'. The governor then emphasised the mission of politics: 'to lower costs and reduce hospital admissions'.