On the one hand the shortage of family doctorson the other hand waiting lists too long: two sides of the same coin that put black on white the crisis facing territorial medicinewhich ended up on the table of the Thursday 26 November Health Commission of the Municipality of Legnanocalled to find the formula to make citizens’ voices heard in a game in which «the municipality can and must play a role», as the councilor Anna Pavan reiterated.
«The theme of waiting lists has already been brought up many times in the representative council and also recently we requested that both the district and the area of general practitioners be convened – explained the deputy mayor -. We asked to know how many citizens of Legnano are without a general practitioner, how many are those who have to resort to a doctor from Rescaldina, who belongs to the same area, and what prospects there are, i.e. how many doctors will retire and what plans to do, also because the temporary surgery does not solve the problem. Substitutes will arrive, as we have been assured, and later the owners, but in the last announcement there were seven places for the area of Legnano and Rescaldina and two presented themselves».
«The municipality can and must play a role, but it also depends on the problems – added Pavan -: problems that are national and regional we cannot think of solving them ourselves, like the problem of waiting lists at the Legnano hospital. On the other hand, we can try to find a solution for general practitioners: we talked about the offices and pointed out that the clinics are already ready at the old hospital in Legnano which will be destined for general practitioners in the Community House. There are also private operators in Legnano who have given me their availability for environments already equipped as surgeries for general practitioners who may have difficulty coming to Legnano: the problem is that there are no doctors. One area in which we can do a great deal is integration with society: if we talk about chronic patients, for example, we are talking about health problems but also about a constellation of problems of a social nature, which sometimes even prevail over those of a health nature and we must learn to work together with the ASST».
That the increasingly evident problems of territorial medicine must be addressed online with all the bodies involved and beyond the political color, moreover, is the road signed by all the commissioners present at the table. «We all know that local medicine, understood both as general medicine and as hospital medicine, is experiencing a devastating period – underlined the president Franco Colombo finding support, net of some skirmishes between the councilors Letterio Munafò and Parolo Garavaglia, in all the colleagues -. This commission has a very important task: bring the voice of citizens and spread the message that this problem can be solved all togetherincluding citizens. Balzano reports “riots” in the emergency room, beatings and threats: it is our duty to reassure people, try to take everyone by the hand and resolve a colossal emergency”.