Homeless and without medical care, in Trentino the volunteers who help the forgotten by health care. Rama: ” Everyone has the right to health ”

TRENTO. Health and social workers, doctors, nurses, assistants, psychologists. In one word, volunteers. People who bring their professionalism in the field to lend a hand, to help, who is on the sidelines of our society. Those who are victims of this “ferocious time” also write Vincenzo Passerini in one of his latest books, refugees, migrants, people who no longer have anything, Italians, foreigners, who sleep in the cold and who are humiliated, offended, left in a corner during the day.

“They are our angels”Some operators of the Meeting point of Trento. They talk of the doctors of the Gr.Is that even in these months of pandemic they never lacked their contribution. They did so by being in the clinic but also going on the street assisting those who are ill and are cut off from that right to health also mentioned in our Constitution, but all too often overwhelmed by bureaucracy.

“We as health workers have a code of ethics. Anyone has the right to medical treatment. Not always however, unfortunately, everyone thinks this way. Often there is myopia and various difficulties are encountered also with the APSS and the Province ”, says Dr. Gianpaolo Rama of the Trentino Gris.

For the last ones, those who live on the street, in precarious settlements, left out of the health system. They are people who do not have a general practitioner or even the money to buy a mask and much less a tampon in some private institution.. But then there is another kind of ailment, those psychiatric that arise from difficulty living on the street, from journeys that lasted kilometers and kilometers, from the pain of leaving their family or having lost everything.

“Like Gris in Trentino we are about forty health workers volunteers including doctors, nurses and other professionals”He explains Gianpaolo Rama. “We work in an outpatient clinic made available by APSS but we also roll up our sleeves to go out and help people on the street or in structures”.

The problems that the part in difficulty of immigrants in Trentino encounters for the defense of health andaccess and use of health services are varied and range from a cultural gap to administrative difficulties (registration in the SSP of minors, self-declaration of effective residence for registration in the SSP of applicants for international protection, protocol for the recognition of the age of minors, exemption from the ticket for unaccompanied minors and unemployed applicants for international protection, etc. .), to organizational problems (border controls and first reception visit to asylum seekers, access to cancer screening for non-enrolled persons, continuity of care for STP code holders, assistance to victims of intentional violence), or, again, a need for financial support when there is a situation of poverty and the need to support or contribute to direct expenses for the defense of health (Class C drugs, dental care, tickets, nutrition and healthy living environment).

“Unfortunately there are many people who are facing the so-called post traumatic stress disorder syndrome – explains Rama – after a migration path and all this aggravated by a lack of integration. There are often heavy wounds upstream ”. For those who are on the street and have nothing, the effects of the Covid-19 they were even more devastating. Naked in front of the virus.

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