VALENTINA is 38 years old, lives in Mantua, and hers is a story like that of hundreds of people with disabilities who live in Lombardy at the time of Covid. Since birth she has suffered from diastrophic dysplasia, a rare non-degenerative genetic disease that has never allowed her to walk. According to law 104 his is 100 percent disability and, three months after the vaccination campaign, his turn only came last Saturday. Valentina is fully part of the so-called “fragile” category, the vaccine is her right, yet she feels privileged despite having used it 25 days later than the national guidelines. “I am a self-sufficient person, despite the illness: I work, I drive, I travel, but my measures are very small. I have a very pronounced scoliosis and since I was a child I constantly train my breathing capacity. Contracting Covid, for me, would have been deadly ”he says. Despite this, however, for the Lombardy Region it was invisible.
Covid vaccine, when it’s up to the frail
by Valentina Arcovio
Valentina Tomirotti, known on social media for its dissemination activities on the issues of inclusion, had access to vaccination with a trick that only word of mouth has made known. To access the lists, she necessarily had to rely on an association that deals with disabilities, although she has never been a member of it. The reason? In Lombardy there is no official booking system for people with disabilities. “I am almost as happy as to be ashamed for having received my dose of Pfizer vaccine, because I know that many other people like me, here in Lombardy, do not know their fate. I’m not a privileged one, it was my turn, but the patchy system we are using is discriminating for our category ”.
Covid, so herd immunity has become a mirage
by Elisa Manacorda
Without an association you are invisible: the criterion is chance
If the national plan is clearly expressed on the need to vaccinate people with disabilities in the first place, that of the Lombardy Region makes water on all sides. There are no precise lists and, from what emerges from the testimony of Valentina and other waiting citizens, the criterion used is, rather, that of the randomness and the thrust that day centers and associations representing disabilities and chronic diseases do to fill the vacuum of management of the Pirellone. Valentina tried for months to undertake a solo path, which is the application of national guidelines, but she met with silence on the part of the institutions. The general practitioner, who should be the figure in charge of booking the injection, also shrugged. No provision or indication on his part, rather an invitation to go to the pharmacy. “I went to the pharmacist who, at my request for information on the vaccine, looked at me as if I were an alien” continues Valentina. “I find it hard to believe that a Region like Lombardy does not have punctual and inclusive lists for people with disabilities, as indicated by the parameters of the national vaccination plan and easily available at the INPS. Instead, this is what is happening: little information and not conveyed. People are left to their fate. “
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by Nicla Panciera
The vast majority of people with disabilities, who are not part of the world of associations, are still at home waiting to hear about their fate. And those few who have had access to the vaccine, it is often pure improvisation. As in the case of GI di Casalmaggiore, in the province of Cremona. Suffering from a neuromotor disease, she received the vaccine on February 24 at the Oglio Po hospital with less than three hours’ notice. What should be the practice is actually the result of non-existent rules. The hospital’s vaccination shift, in fact, that day should have ended at noon. Yet, an email arrived the evening before to the coordinator of the vaccination point, spoke clearly: it was necessary to keep open and continue with the vaccinations even in the afternoon, despite the fact that there were no appointments or lists. “At that point – says IG – given the provision to dedicate an afternoon to vaccinations, without having any fixed appointment, a doctor present there who knows me, and knows that I am a multi-pathological person, entered me for that same day. I got the vaccine, but how? The Region continues to move around in patches ”.
While people with disabilities are left to themselves, or vaccinated without specific pre-established criteria, Lombard caregivers are groping in the dark. They should be vaccinated at the same time as the person they take care of but, according to Valentina Tomirotti, everything appears to be postponed until a later date. “Caregivers are not welcomed, it seems that we will talk about it later. But how, if there is no official list of any kind? My case is emblematic: I got the vaccine on Saturday, but my parents, both caregivers, don’t know when they will have access to it. A regional health system cannot be based on these naive methods, because they are not synonymous with professionalism and punctuality of rights “he concludes. While the Lombardy Region moves slowly, hundreds of people with disabilities continue to stay at home without knowing or how, nor when, they will regain their freedom.
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