Marco Geddes da Filicaia
In his long presidency of the Medical Order of Florence, from 1988 to 2017, Antonio Panti represented a reference for doctors not only in Tuscany. In fact, Panti had the ability to play a role of comparison and stimulus to regional and national health policies. He was a personality who was not only “organistic”, but interested in the many aspects of healthcare and society.
It is impossible, remembering Antonio Panti, not to go back over the years, to the first times I met him, we exchanged ideas or we collaborated, and think back to the long journey, characterized by significant transformations in Italian society and in particular in healthcare, which saw him participate and, on many occasions, protagonist. It was the early seventies and elections were being held at the Medical Association of Florence for the renewal of the Council. I was present at the counting for a marginal, minority and alternative list. A “flagship” presence. Remarkable participation, one name was always present in the count, that of Giovanni Turziani, the president of the Order. There followed, with an identical number of preferences, three surnames of doctors, all starting with P. Turziani approached me, with a good-natured and understanding air, and whispered in my ear, in a tone of admiration for the success of his colleagues belonging to the list headed by him: “Paci, Panti, Parpagnoli. Three guys from hell!”.
I then met Antonio Panti during long nights of discussions on the reorganization of conventional relationships with general practitioners and on the incompatibilities between an employee of an institution and a treating doctor: a series of measures and agreements that preceded the health reform. The meetings, in which I represented the public side and Antonio the union side, took place at the Health Department of the Tuscany Region, then located in a few rooms at number 16 of Piazza della Libertà. Panti was an affable trade unionist, gifted with an infallible memory of the laws, regulations, previous union agreements and with an obstinacy in defining, explaining and negotiating which had earned him the definition, expressed with fear and admiration, of “mastiff”.
In his long presidency of the Medical Association of Florence, from 1988 to 2017, he represented a point of reference for doctors not only in Tuscany. In fact, Panti had the ability to play a role of comparison and stimulus to regional and national health policies. His was a personality who was not only “organistic”, but interested in the many aspects of healthcare and society, a reference for ethical reflections and for the conservation and valorisation of the historical and artistic heritage of healthcare, presiding for years at the Documentation Center for the History of Florentine Healthcare and Healthcare and obstinately opposing its progressive dismantling. Cultured person, passionate about cinema, art, frequenter of auctions and antique markets where we met at the book stalls.
It can be said that Antonio went through the gestation, birth and evolution of the National Health Service with unchanged attention and growing sensitivity.
Until the end, Panti was an attentive critic of the decay of the Italian health system, challenging the parties and their recent electoral programs: “… the widespread, desolating cultural deficiency: nothing on the ethical and political problems of immanent AI, no mention of the issue of the so-called Planet Health” and wrote, in reference to the latest national elections: “…any mention of healthcare as part of global security according to WHO indications is missing. In short, let’s not worry about the future [si evince da questi programmi] which is already today.” Antonio stated, with conviction, that “The SSN is only possible with general taxation and progressive taxation”.
The last time we met in September, to go to dinner with mutual friends, I had recently read some of his considerations on the end of life. Panti had written about the need for a new ethical relationship between medicine and death: “Addressing the issue from this point of view means accepting that a person’s self-determination does not stop when faced with their own death… the fundamental point is that we are talking about the prevalence of the citizen’s decision, not that of the doctor or any other decision maker. And also that society has the right to ask medicine, whose achievements are responsible for an unbearable state of life or an unacceptable terminal condition for the subject, to remedy this situation that the person experiences as a wrong… Deontology considers the therapeutic obstinacy as a real mistake, a futility and, at the same time, forces doctors to take responsibility for a death that is as peaceful or less painful as possible; in a word, to assist the patient until the end of his life and considers abandoning him a very serious behavior”.
I told him, thinking back to these statements, that I admired the fact that he was in hisunwittingly”. Antonio “came to his senses” and told me that perhaps I was right. I specified to him that I had instead used the term “unwittingly” to highlight that as the years advanced his wisdom had increased. Which happens as the years progress. But only rarely.
The photographs were kindly provided by the Medical Association of Florence.
International health systems