by Ornella Mancin
31 GEN –
Dear Director,
Prof is right. Cavicchi: public health is dying before our eyes and no one is lifting a finger so that this doesn’t happen. Gas stations, taxi drivers, just to name a few categories, are able to make themselves heard by the governments on duty; we can’t do it yet we have in hand the fate of one of the most important public services for the population.
Essentially because we are divided into a thousand hard-to-recompose rigoli and then because they have always made us consider it “unethical” to go on strike: health services cannot be blocked because citizens need them and we work for the health of others.
But if all of this risks ending miserably, if public health will cease to be public health if we don’t move, can it not become “ethical” to go on strike and block all health services so that politicians realize the extreme gravity of the situation?
Paris is well worth a mass!
There are tons of reasons to cross your arms:
- a bureaucratic burden that is destroying the profession,
- the shortage of health personnel which forces us to work in intolerable workloads whether we work in hospitals or in the local area,
- a continuous and progressive outsourcing of services which makes work in healthcare less and less competent and more risky for the health of citizens,
- undignified salaries in the face of exaggerated amounts given to external cooperatives that often provide low-skilled personnel,
- the increase in aggressiveness of patients who, often frustrated in their requests, express their load of anger towards those who treat them because they represent the only “front-office” towards which one can lash out,
- the clear perception that all this does not interest the political decision-makers who are letting the mess happen.
Differentiated autonomy is breaking down on all of this, like a sword of Damocles destined to give the coup de grace to our NHS, decreeing the end forever.
First of all because a health system that will be the sum of 21 autonomous and different systems can no longer be defined as “national” in any case, but above all because the inspiring principles that led to its constitution in 1978 will no longer exist.
How can the founding principles of the SSN (universality, equality, fairness) be maintained by dividing a single system into several systems with a different amount of resources available? A system can be considered universal, egalitarian and fair which will be able to establish different methods and criteria for access to treatments, making some accessible and others not depending on where one lives, effectively reducing the right to health of citizens living in regions with fewer resources?
Is a healthcare distributed on the basis of birth, residence and wealth conceivable? One cannot fail to realize that the division of our NHS into 21 autonomous regions risks making equal and equitable access impossible for all citizens because it first of all breaks the principle of solidarity which is the basis of a fair distribution of wealth.
We are in fact making access to care a privilege for a few.
It is time for those who care about health to make themselves heard with all their strength to block this unstoppable drift and help to make citizens understand what they are risking.
I am deeply convinced of the truthfulness and depth of the words of Pope Francis: “Health is not a luxury! A world that discards the sick, that does not assist those who cannot afford treatment, is a cynical world and has no future”.
If we don’t want this to become a reality for us too, it’s time to shake off our lazy indifference and fight for the salvation of our NHS.
Ornella Mancin
January 31, 2023
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