Antonio Sbraga
A “down to earth” rescue. The viral video of the two patients lying on the floor of the Sant’Andrea emergency room, filmed while they are on a drip, rekindles the controversy over the state of health of the Lazio healthcare system.
“While D’Amato and Bianchi are arguing over the split vote, the health situation in Lazio is increasingly collapsing – attacks Francesco Rocca, center-right candidate for the presidency of the Region – A video is circulating on social networks in which patients are seen left to themselves along the corridors of Sant’Andrea. Patients who, instead of being treated as they deserve, are forced to stay on the floor, literally on the floors, waiting for a stretcher or a bed and whose dignity is trampled on. I express my solidarity not only with the patients, but also with the healthcare workers forced to work in truly indecent environments for a civilized country. This, then – underlines Rocca – can lead to the phenomenon of unjustified violence against health workers who have nothing to do with it, but who become targets of anger and frustration. All this is the fruit of ten years of maladministration by the centre-left. Zingaretti and D’Amato have abandoned Lazio healthcare to a sad fate.
Also for the regional coordinator of FdI, Paolo Trancassini, the regional one is a “health system now in collapse: the Sant’Andrea scandal is proof of this”. Images which, according to the deputy Angelo Rossi (FdI), «are not worthy of the capital. Patients on the floor, stretchers piled up in the corridors, patients who are in immediate need of treatment and assistance who, instead, are left to themselves for hours and hours».
The emergency room of Sant’Andrea, despite the university caliber of the hospital, is still a level I Emergency and Acceptance Department (DEA). The “promotion” to level II Goddess, established since 2021, is still blocked by the non-opening of the Obstetrics-Delivery room department, foreseen by a decree dating back to 2016 but not yet implemented. “Obstetrics is being prepared, for now hospitalizations are possible up to the second month of pregnancy”, writes Sant’Andrea.
Same exact situation in another university hospital such as the Tor Vergata polyclinic. Where in 2021 the “opening of the obstetrics beds and the completion of the 40 beds of Tower 8 in 2022” was announced. However, the delivery room has still been in “gestation” for seven years (“planning for the Tor Vergata and Sant’Andrea companies to build an obstetrics ward”, wrote the Region in decree 214 of June 2016) and then dated as ” imminent” last April by the company. Which has once again postponed, this time to September, the opening “of the Obstetrics, Delivery Room and Neonatology presumably in the second half of 2023”.
Until then, however, the two “Ps” cannot become Hospitals In Campania, the second-level “Dea” emergency rooms are more than double those in Lazio with the same population as the second-level Dea emergency departments, which in Lazio are only five ( a third compared to the 14 of Campania, which has the same population): Umberto I, Gemelli, San Camillo, San Giovanni and Bambino Gesù. They are all in the capital and none in the remaining four provinces.
In Ciociaria yesterday the regional councilor Sara Battisti (Pd) visited «the hospital of Sora, with the councilor Alessio D’Amato, where the structural works have been completed to make the hospital more efficient and make it more comfortable for users. Work was carried out in the emergency room, in the short-intensive observation room, and all spaces were enlarged and redeveloped to improve working conditions for staff and provide better care for patients. It is a path – Battisti concludes – which is making it possible to redevelop all the structures».
At Sant’Andrea, despite the launch of the emergency department reorganization plan against overcrowding from 1 February (closure of the 16 beds in the Astanteria, transformed into 8 emergency medicine beds and another 8 for short-term intensive observation, plus the Boarding area on the S2 floor and the Holding Area with 12 beds, which can be increased up to 28) was however not enough to avoid the controversy with the viral video on that “down to earth” rescue.