POWER – “We are in a real emergency, due in particular to the shortage of doctors, but also of health personnel in the sector, aggravated by the contingency of infections and legitimate summer holidays”. The alarm launched in recent weeks by the regional secretary of the CGIL, Angelo Summa, finds support in the “radiography” of the Lucanian hospitals. And not only. Because the topic mainly concerns territorial medicine, family doctors, medical guards. We are facing a situation that is becoming more and more critical over the years. There are countries, such as Vietri di Potenza or Pignola, without a general practitioner, with residents forced to emigrate even to have a simple prescription.
The whole system is in a tailspin and in the mosaic that is crumbling there are reverberations on the hospital network: “Postponements of medical bookings and postponements of services and medical visits – thunders Summa – go to implement the long waiting lists generate irreparable inconvenience to everyone those citizens who need health care. Faced with this picture – denounces the regional secretary of the CGIL – we continue to witness an embarrassing and no longer tolerable immobility of the councilor for Health, turned in on himself, as if to avoid that necessary confrontation through which to face the many issues suspended by months”.
The roots of the health crisis (which actually affects the whole national territory) must be sought upstream, where doctors are trained. The decision to provide for a limited number for access to the Faculty of Medicine does not take into account the need to replace retired doctors. The Covid emergency has accentuated the shortage and at this rate Basilicata will find itself with absolutely insufficient general practitioners to cover the territory. The appeal not to provide for the limited number and, therefore, the entrance test to Medicine has been repeatedly “disintegrated” by those who believe that there must be a barrier to guarantee more quality. But are we so sure that the most deserving will access the course of study? Have you ever wondered why most of the students who pass the test are children or grandchildren of doctors? But that’s another story. The fundamental issue is the shortage of white coats which has a cascading impact on the entire health care network, starting with general practitioners. In recent days, the Region announced that it has approved the acknowledgment of the suitability judgments formulated by the Final Examination Commission of the 2018-2021 three-year course of Specific Training in General Medicine. Twenty candidates have obtained the diploma for the three-year training period 2018-2021.
It is certainly good news, but it does not solve the shortage of medical personnel considering that from 2018 to the end of 2021, 50% of Lucanian doctors have hung their stethoscope on a nail. And 2022 will be the “black year” with 57 retirements. If the phenomenon is projected to ten years, the doctors who will close the clinic in Basilicata, according to data from the Fimmg (Italian Federation of General Practitioners), exceed the current ones, with 533 retirements. Translation: Action must be taken as soon as possible to prevent the situation from becoming even more difficult to manage. How? Perhaps the first way to go is to open the Faculty of Medicine to everyone. Without barriers.