Drastic reduction in the number of sessions: from 2 or 3 weekly to one per month
UDINE. In Silvia the doctors had hypothesized that her daughter would remain “for life” in a wheelchair because of the infantile cerebral palsy she is suffering from. Instead, thanks to continuous physiotherapy sessions and the constant commitment of capable professionals, now, now a teenager, he can walk. Progress achieved in years and years of sessions at Gervasutta, but destined to fail due to a thinning of the therapies, drastically dropped from 2 or 3 a week (if not daily) to one every month or month and a half.
«In the last 4 or 5 years the service has deteriorated a lot, before we were followed in the growth path of our children. Now, however, we have been abandoned to ourselves and we are forced to turn to private individuals, paying, for these services “attacks Silvia, on behalf of a group of parents who found themselves in the same precarious situation and in support of which she also moved. the regional councilor Simona Liguori (Citizens), signatory of an agenda that commits the junta to strengthen the service.
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Any attempt undertaken by the mother – and by other parents – to consult the Central Friuli University Health Authority to find out more is useless. “They denied us – he explains – civic access to documents: we wanted to know the number of health and administrative workers in service at the” Rehabilitation of childhood onset diseases “department from 2015 to today, with indication of job and weekly work time at Gervasutta ». But also the number of patients followed and the treatment for each individual pathology. The request for access to the regional ombudsman did not go any better, and he clarified “his incompetence”. «Until a few years ago – indicates Marco, another parent – Gervasutta was considered a structure of excellence, alongside children and their parents, now this is no longer the case. The feeling is that there is a lack of staff to organize the service, either because of a hijacking to the civil hospital, or because of a lack of turnover following retirement. Thus rehabilitation and physiotherapy remain the responsibility of the parents “.
«Until she was 10 – Silvia resumes – my daughter (who is now 16) was followed by a fantastic team, so much so that the sessions, as soon as an improvement was seen, made them become daily. Only in this way could he walk. Now they put one on you every now and then, just to give you a sop, with the excuse that it is now big and will not improve anymore or with the excuse of Covid. But in this way he risks regressing ». This is also the concern of Federica, also the mother of a girl suffering from infantile cerebral paresis: «A structure that takes care of a child must then continue its treatment. Physiotherapy cannot be done once, especially now that my daughter moves less between Dad and Covid. It is necessary to resort to private, but it costs ». For his little girl, affected by spastic tetraparesis, Alex had asked to be able to use the Gervasutta swimming pool for physiotherapy, as indicated by the Milanese center which followed her daughter. A request «remained in vain», exactly like those for «the massage following the botulinum injections» or an «increase in speech therapy sessions».
The new director general of AsuFc, Denis Caporale, said he wanted to verify the situation, committing himself to give an answer as soon as possible.