While over 65 thousand aspiring doctors e doctors they attempt the entrance test to Medicine and Surgery, with the hope of winning one of the 15,876 places available, in various Italian cities, students take to the streets to protest against “the limited number that makes thousands of children flee abroad every year and that leaves the country without medical assistance”. In Palermo, the protest sit-in was held in front of the city’s university, organized by the autonomous student laboratory. “The pandemic has taught us nothing. Stop the entrance tests ”, reads one of the banners hanging in front of the university building. Over the megaphone, Giovanni Castronovo from the Student Laboratory speaks of an “inadequate health system”, of “missing funds and equipment”, and above all of “absent health personnel”. And he adds: “Despite all this, instead of investing to ensure a health system that is truly public and efficient, capable of helping those who are ill and cannot afford to go to private clinics for treatment, we still find ourselves with the limited number that every year prevents more than 50,000 aspiring doctors from exercising their right to study and then guarantees everyone the right to health“. In Palermo this year they are available 475 places. A number that students define as “a pittance», Another reason that« will force thousands of young people to enroll in other faculties, to emigrate or even not to attend university ».
Rome, flash mob in front of La Sapienza
«We must do as in France. The test and the closed number must be eliminated. Everyone must have the opportunity to test themselves ». In Rome, thousands showed up to try to enter the coveted Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. However, some protest: «With Covid we have seen how necessary doctors are. In addition to the difficulties and the nights on the books, the students feel ready and to face this day, however, an awareness has been expressed by everyone: in medicine there is a natural selection already in the first year. We must do as in France ». A young candidate, on the other hand, arrives late and out of breath for the Medicine tests. In the few meters that separate him from the entrance to the university, everything happens to him: a nun runs over him on a bike, a cook who passes by spills salt on him and in the meantime a footballer with a purple jersey number 17 gets in his way. dribbling and finds himself passing under a ladder carried by two workers. «Quiet it’s just a flash mob» reads a banner, «luck does not determine your future, your actions do. Enter medicine because it is right! ».
Il flash moborganized by the Consulcesi law firm, would be “an” anti-jinx “initiative to raise awareness and bring attention to the need for review the selection process of doctors “. The president of Consulcesi, Massimo Tortorella explains: «We find it unacceptable that it is luck that determines the destiny of these young students and, consequently, the destiny of our precious National Health Service. We know that from next year there will be the reform, but at the moment on our portal the candidates continue to ask us for support, they tell us that they are confused, that they have no guarantees on what will happen ». At the same time, the young people of the Fgc protest in front of the entrance to say enough to the tests: “The pandemic has shown it, the limited number must be canceled».
The protest in Turin: “Closed number tool to dismantle public health”
Even at the Lingotto in Turin, home of the admission tests, the militants of the Communist Youth Front protested against the limited number. «The National Health System has shown all its structural weaknesses, the result of systematic dismantling», they explain, «since 2010, more than 170 hospitals (15%) and 800 clinics have been closed throughout the country. At the same time, private health care institutions have proliferated and now constitute more than 48% of the total health facilities ”. The reference is also to the electoral campaign and to the upcoming elections on which the boys show total distrust: «Today there is no electoral promise that holds, because all the major parties have been complicit in it. Even two years of pandemic and over 170,000 deaths were not enough to induce a change of course ». Then the attack against the entrance test in Medicine: “With the rhetoric of meritocracy, fictitious in fact, a limited number is supported in medicine and health professions courses which, since its inception, has been one of the tools with which public health has been dismantled ”.
In Catania “against the health care desired by the bosses”
Also in Catania in front of the University Citadel, about twenty FGC militants protested against the entrance test. «The one against the closed number», said Francesca D’Addeo, «is the struggle of students to build a better health system, capable of taking care of everyone’s health and responding to emergency situations. Abolish the limited number against the sanity desired by the bosses ».
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