Two years of the pandemic were a wake-up call that reminded us not only of the intrinsic value of health, but also of how much the dimension of health is an essential component of economic and social relationships. From this point of view, that of social medicine is a very topical approach as emerged from the conference “Social medicine in evolution: between innovation, new needs and protection of disability”, organized on Friday 8 July in Rome by the Mesit Foundation with the support of the editorial network PreSa – Health Prevention.
The double track: innovation and rights
“The pandemic is giving us healthcare that goes on a double track: on the one hand, the track of innovation, advanced research, innovative therapies, as demonstrated by the experience of vaccines against Covid-19, which allowed us to very quick to stem the pandemic tsunami. On the other hand, the issue of the protection of rights, especially the protection of disability. The challenge that awaits us today is to understand how much innovation and timely access to it can reduce the impact on disability, especially as regards the chronically ill “, he explains. Marco Trabucco Aurilio, president of the Mesit Foundation and PreSa scientific coordinator. “Think, for example – continues Trabucco – of taking charge of a rare patient: how quickly taking charge can be decisive in order not to make him live with disability for life or, for many children, to save his life itself” .
In line with the “One Health” approach
From this point of view, the social medicine approach fits fully into the current scenario “by marrying the concept of One Health evolved into that of Planetary Health, it demonstrates that it has fully grasped the new health needs on which our future and that of our children, ”he explained Marcella Marletta, president of Aistom, councilor of the Federation of Oncological Voluntary Associations and coordinator of the Scientific Committee of the Mesit Foundation. For the Foundation, the development of new drugs and medical devices can represent a truly significant turning point in patient care: for this reason it has announced the forthcoming establishment of a working group dedicated to the topic of competitiveness and innovation, made up of leading experts in the sector, to contribute to the definition of the new governance of the pharmaceutical and medical devices sector, with the ambition of becoming a support tool for the productive world for national institutions
The lesson of the pandemic
“Access to the highest possible degree of health is an extremely important goal: a challenge for the future of the new generations that requires the participation of many other strategic sectors besides healthcare”, he added. Francesco Saverio Mennini lecturer at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Rome Tor Vergata. «In the last 15-20 years – recalled Mennini – emergency instruments have been used without proper planning. While today, after the period of the pandemic, the conditions seem to have been created to guarantee a “new Renaissance” of our healthcare system ». And social medicine falls to because it “correlates all those dimensions that go beyond clinical and strictly curative medicine, connecting the social spheres, the spheres of well-being, psychological, social and working inclusion and creating a continuum between treatment and prevention paths and the impact on the social and economic world “he stressed again Marcello Cattanipresident of Farmindustria