Hundreds of thousands of visits, exams, surgeries and screening for cancer, diabetes and other diseases that have “skipped” in the last year due to covid. A picture that highlights how the pandemic, in addition to the difficulties and deaths directly caused, risks generating a further long wave that must absolutely be repaired. Andrea Costa, undersecretary at the Ministry of Health and Anna Lisa Mandorino, general secretary of Cittadinanzattiva, will try to give answers to the topic of how to recover lost time, with what resources and plans, during the new Talk “How to return to treatment? Recovering skipped visits and exams due to Covid ”scheduled for Monday 14 June at 5 pm on“ Allies for Health ”- the new portal dedicated to medical-scientific information created by Novartis Italia. To register and participate in the talk, you can click here.
According to some data that emerged from the report “Let’s go back to heal ourselves. Health professionals and citizens: between Covid and health needs “- created by Cittadinanzattiva in collaboration with the Federation of general practitioners – the most reported inconveniences concern the cancellation of visits and exams already booked (ultrasound scans and other services provided for cancer patients ) before the pandemic broke out (49.9%). In 34.4% of cases, citizens report the difficulty of booking new visits and exams, in some cases it is impossible due to the “indefinite block” of waiting lists. All this increases the risk of not intercepting emerging pathologies in a timely manner. According to data released by the Italian Association of Medical Oncology (AIOM) and reported in the XXIII Pit Salute report of Cittadinanzattiva, in the first 5 months of 2020, about one million and four hundred thousand fewer screening tests were performed in Italy than in the same period. in 2019, cancer diagnoses more than halved, 64% of surgeries canceled, while 70% of patients gave up rehabilitation. Furthermore, considering that in Italy there are about 24 million people affected by chronic disease, half of whom have co-morbidities, it is evident that the changes imposed by the pandemic have had a significant impact on this category of patients.
Today, once the acute phase of the pandemic has been overcome, the health system has to deal with a worsening of the criticalities already present before Covid, the result of a ten-year defining, and organizational issues, such as waiting lists, further worsened. We need an efficient, effective and timely system on the implementation by the Regions of measures aimed at recovering performance. The talk will take stock of the issue at 360 ° to provide answers to this “emergency in an emergency” and to provide concreteness and implementation tools that guarantee equity of access to care.