“Together with you Roberto we have dreamed and desired the impossible. NeMO Ancona’s home is your home”. This is the dedicated to the memory of Roberto Frullini which from today, Thursday 9 March, is mail at the entrance to the NeMO Clinical Center, on the fifth floor of the Marche di Torrette AOU. Suddenly passed away on 10 December, Roberto Frullini has been dealing with disability since the age of 3, a condition that determined his battle for a healthcare capable of adequately responding to the complexity of the needs of neuromuscular pathologies. Tireless builder of the Common Good, his dream of caring for him became reality in the spring of 2022. The numbers of the first nine months of activity of NeMO Ancona – underlines a press release – confirm the need for it. With 1,436 outpatient services and 151 hospitalizations and day hospitals, 337 patients have been taken care of in these first few months, of which 87 outside the regional territory. A project that is also proving to be effective in reducing the regional passive mobility index for these pathologies and which, to date, records the percentage of those who have returned to be treated in the area in 26% of cases among the patients taken care of. All free services for patients because they are paid for by the Regional Health System.
«We wanted to stop to remember a brotherly friend, who represented a point of reference in the area for our community» he declares Alberto Fontanapresident of the NeMO Clinical Centers. Who continues: «There have been many challenges that we have faced together over the years and many images of an intense and beautiful journey. That’s why sharing the activities of the first few months of NeMO Ancona means first of all telling the work for which Roberto spent his life. Together with him we dreamed big and today, in memory of him, we can only continue our commitment to give strength to that alliance born from the desire for good that unites our actions ».
Spokesperson for patient associations, Roberto Frullini he has always been convinced that it was possible to integrate the resources, know-how and experience of Fondazione Serena onlus, the body that has been managing the NeMO Centers since 2008, with the mission and expertise of healthcare in the Marche region. And if fifteen years ago it might have seemed visionary to imagine a co-planning between the public and private social sectors, today – with its 12 beds for hospitalization, 2 for day hospitals, 2 specialist clinics, 1 gym, 2 and an average saturation rate of 95% of hospitalizations – the center of Ancona is testimony to how this alliance is possible and generative.
“Roberto was a staunch defender of the rights of the world of disability” declares the vice president and councilor for health Philip Saltamartini. «He has always fought and often with uncommon ability, intelligence and lightness. His disappearance last December was a great loss: he was a sensitive man, a real resource despite his suffering condition. Among his battles was the birth of the NeMO Center in Torrette, so this naming seems to me very appropriate ».
«Hosting the Nemo Center within the Marche University Hospital can only fill our Company with sincere pride», he declares Marco Armando Gozzini, director general of the Marche University Hospital. «A pride that arises from the history of the Center itself, from the quality of the activities provided, from its professionalism and from the human energy that characterizes it. Today there is another reason to give a very high meaning to the day: to remember Roberto Frullini, a person whose generosity has produced extraordinary results for patients suffering from neuromuscular diseases and for their families. Among these results there is certainly this Centre, which Roberto strongly desired».
At the NeMO Clinical Center we also look to the future and are at the forefront of scientific research. I am In fact, 28 patients who to date have had access to the new treatments approved for Sma and to the experimental treatment for ALS. For each of them, targeted and highly specialized rehabilitation courses and projects are designed.
«Roberto Frullini has left us a great legacy but above all he has shown us that commitment and tenacity always win», he says Mauro Silvestrini, dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Polytechnic University of the Marches. «Today we have a center capable not only of taking care of patients but also of developing research projects in collaboration with the Polytechnic University of the Marche and with our University Hospital, always aimed at giving patients better opportunities for managing their disease”.
But the NeMO Ancona, like the other six branches of the network, embodies a message of life, which goes beyond fear and the limit of the disease. To remember it is an excellence from the Marches, the multi-starred chef Mauro Ulassi: «Roberto, my confidant, my personal spiritual trainer, always knew how to put me in a good mood. He, in his wheelchair, was sharp and sensitive. Elegant and beautiful. We met at a cooking show about ten years ago. Then we became friends; We called each other brothers.” And with Frullini, in fact, Uliassi immediately made himself available to bring the experience of taste and the pleasure of being at the table to all those who suffer from dysphagia, i.e. the difficulty in swallowing solids and liquids. A problem that affects not only those who experience a neuromuscular disease.
“Nobody dies as long as he lives in the heart of those who stay”. And it is with this spirit that at the naming ceremony of NeMO Ancona the delegations of Aisla, Uildm, Famiglie Sma and Telethon were present, together with the Paladini Foundation, of which Roberto was president (in the photo the delegations) A community that has gathered around the memory of a friend and with the awareness that this richness of his will continue to be alive in all those who will inhabit the spaces of the Centre. Because you will feel welcomed, looked after and safe, just like when you come home every time.
Photos from the press office