Home care, doctors treat, the minister is silent – Soon a referendum to reform local health –
Healing in science and conscience, assistance, volunteering, closeness and listening. What went wrong in territorial medicine during the Covid-19 emergency? What has the #oterapiadomiciliarecovid19 group done in each region? Why weren’t the doctors who worked in the field heard by the government despite the Senate vote asking for it?
This is the heart of the Covid-19 National Home Care Conference – informs a press release from the committee – which was held yesterday in Piazza Duomo in Milan, with thousands of people arriving from all over Italy and abroad, including people healed from the virus thanks to the support of the doctors of the Covid-19 Home Care Committee, citizens and professionals.
Leading the day, three hours of exchange and information without filters, was the Lombard journalist Max Rigano, alongside the president of the Committee Erich Grimaldi and the spokesperson Valentina Rigano. Many doctors who, through the network, the Facebook group #oterapiadomiciliarecovid19, reached 500,000 members, chose to be present to bring their testimony to the streets. Among them: Andrea Mangiagalli General Practitioner of Pioltello, Riccardo Szumski General Practitioner of Santa Lucia di Piave, Francesco Garofoli General Practitioner of Molfetta, Nino Pignataro General Practitioner in Rome, Serafino Fazio Professor of Internal Medicine Federico University II Naples, Salvatore Totaro General practitioner Messina, Pierfrancesco Di Masi resuscitator anesthetist Bari, Gretel Thedy Psychiatrist Savona, Erminia Maria Ferrari General practitioner of Castel Rozzone.
Fundamental for the support of Covid patients and for those who have lost a family member, as well as for those who have recovered from the virus but with consequences, is the psychological support group. The coordinators of the network Giacomo Zampella and Sonia Collaro, responsible for the psychological support project of the home therapy group, spoke about the damage caused by Covid. And again volunteers, moderators, nurses, nutrition biologists, all those who gave life to the network and who still assist Covid patients at home or in telemedicine, in the face of a territorial network that has not been able to keep up with the needs of population.
In the square, signatures were collected for a petition with the aim of asking the Ministry of Health to take into consideration the work of doctors in the area, as expressly requested by the Senate with the vote on 8 April.
“It was an important day, which restored the right dignity to the work of these doctors”, said the lawyer Erich Grimaldi, president of the Covid-19 Home Care Committee, “we have asked the Minister for a new discussion several times, but not we never got an answer ”. Then he added “it is difficult to understand the reason for this silence, since everyone’s goal should be to find as many ways as possible to fight the virus, which has not yet abandoned us”.
Finally Grimaldi concluded: “we will promote a popular referendum for the reform of the territorial health care, the real sore point of this emergency, and the data on our work will arrive, even if no one, and I repeat no one, has offered us to help us collect them and show black on white the efficacy of the group’s therapeutic scheme “. Grimaldi then specified “the good will and the desire to do in this country should be supported and rewarded, obviously this is not the case and it is very sad”.
“Listening to stories of people treated when they were most afraid and lonely, deepening the work of doctors, is what led me as an information professional to follow and help this group”, explained Valentina Rigano, spokesperson, “the comparison he got off to a good start with the institutions, only to run aground for reasons that I do not understand today, but which obviously have to do only with politics ”. And if “in such a vast group of people there will certainly be different ideas on many points relating to the pandemic, but we are certainly light years away from ‘alternative’ medicine or conspiracy”, continued Rigano, “these are doctors and professionals serious, including Luigi Cavanna, chosen to represent Italian doctors in the Nobel Prize nomination, for this reason I do not understand some of the reactions of colleagues in the press, who have never even deepened a iota of the work done by the group “. Rigano concluded: “in such a situation we should put aside skepticisms and ideologies and work for the common goal”.