AGRIGENTO – For three years they have been waiting for answers on the death of Loredana Guida, the 44-year-old teacher from Agrigento who was struck by a very serious form of malaria contracted in Nigeria, a country where she wanted to open a school for children. The disease was diagnosed only days after her return to Italy despite her fever and suffering, she had told, first to her family doctor, then to the emergency room and to the medical guard, that she had returned from Africa.
A clue that no one has grasped and which led to the woman’s death. Now the family members have written a letter to the head of state, the Palermo prosecutor’s office and the minister of health to tell the story of the ordeal experienced by the teacher and ask for justice. Only for three doctors, in fact, the Prosecutor of Agrigento requested the trial, for two doctors – the head of intensive care and a doctor from the emergency room – the prosecutors have twice and despite the perplexities of the investigating judge requested the archiving, arguing that the woman’s conditions were already so serious that nothing the two could have done.
An assessment not shared by the family that asks for help from the institutions. When Loredana’s first symptoms appeared, she turned to her family doctor to whom she immediately told that she had been in Africa. She was liquidated with the diagnosis of a trivial flu without ever being visited, she went back and forth between the emergency room and medical guard for days. On January 20, 2020, she arrived in a coma at the hospital. Just 24 hours later she was hospitalized and tested for malaria.
And with incredible delay she was given the quinine that the Asp of Agrigento had to go and get in Catania. The family – the mother and the three brothers – ask for “a fair trial where the parties, each questioned for their own responsibilities in the adversarial procedure that befits a civilized country – they write – can and must express their reasons by declaring themselves innocent until proven guilty” . But, if guilty, “should be condemned without the possibility of shortcuts”.