A doctor in Ostia. My challenges for a healthy Town Hall

by Mario Falconi

29 OTT – Dear Director,

as you know, I was elected President of the 10th Municipality of the Municipality of Rome after an exciting electoral campaign where many did not believe that we had been able to carry out this “impossible mission”. It is the Municipality that also includes Ostia and its hinterland (Acilia, Casal Palocco) for over 2600 years an integral part of Rome even if 27 km away from the Campidoglio, a city within the city, we can indeed say that Roma Capitale is a Municipality that administers two city ​​of which an expanse on the Tyrrhenian Sea and with the largest archaeological expanse, the excavations of Ostia Antica.

There will be a lot to do to bring about the Renaissance in this part of Rome from the GRA to the Sea, but, taking into account the authoritative newspaper that hosts me and my profession which, as you know, is that of a surgeon I would like to illustrate to your readers what in the field of health I intend to achieve.

Who more than a doctor, moreover, could heal this territory after a long, too long time of abandonment, a doctor who was not only a hospital doctor and family doctor but who led the largest union of family doctors, presided over the most great order of doctors, that of Rome and was Vicar President of Enpam, therefore with a management experience “tested”.

I remember that according to law 833/78 the Mayor is the local health authority, the “first health officer” and therefore the role of the Municipality and its municipal divisions is anything but marginal; for this reason, in collaboration with the ASL Roma 3, I would like to contribute to achieving the famous social and health integration between the local authority and health care that is able to guarantee the development of the right to health protection in this area, as indicated by the World Organization of Health or: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not simply the absence of disease”.

To achieve this goal, the Municipality in particular and the Capitol in general have a decisive and strategic role that is not strictly health care but involves all the factors that guaranteeing an excellent quality of life make the right to health protection enshrined in article 32 of our wonderful Republican Constitution; factors that from the environment, to educational, sports and recreational facilities, to social services, to elderly centers, to the quality of urban traffic and transport, are the responsibility of the local authority.

Certainly this Municipality will want to do its part in planning the new interventions that, thanks to the PNNR, will have to be implemented to equip the ASL Roma 3 with structures, technology and above all professional resources capable of satisfying new and old health needs.

Compared to when I worked there as a hospital and then as a family doctor, health care in this area has been depleted of facilities and personnel to get out of the tunnel of the enormous economic deficit and now that we have come out of it we would like to be protagonists of the choices in terms of programming health and social and health care that will be realized: from the establishment of the planned Community Houses with the consequent strengthening of all that is the articulated and multi-professional territorial health and socio-sanitary response to the technological enhancement of the GB Grassi and CPO hospitals up to the relaunch of the Health Departments Mental to Prevention.

But, above all, we would need new recruits of professionals and “health producers” able, in terms of quality and quantity, to make this part of the capital a Health Center no longer considered of a lower rank but which becomes an excellence for the city and the Region… after all the CPO has been in the rehabilitation field, for decades not only for the Centrosud but also for the other side of the Mediterranean and so the whole ASL could become it.

Mario Falconi

President of the 10th Municipality of Rome Capital

October 29, 2021
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