Pistoia, 28 December 2020 – Pistoia-Milan – or Perugia, or Naples, or Bolzano it doesn’t matter – never so close. And this is how in a health system deeply tired due to the super load test from Covid-19, almost unable to deal with everything that Covid is not, a crack arrives: it is called “Solidarity medicine”, service of free online medical advice run by health professionals aimed at everyone. The physical location is only that of the “idea” – Milan, the city from which the Dr. Alessandro Lanzani promoter of the project – but the real seat is instead the whole of Italy, from wherever there is the possibility to pick up the phone and make a call. The process is this: a first access is made via email ([email protected]) or mobile (351.6955152), you present your case by sending all the material useful to produce a diagnosis or in any case to direct the patient to support, if necessary a video call is made and you receive, where useful, the prescription to be able to buy a drug or book a further study diagnostic.
Specialist in orthopedics and sports medicine, Lanzani temporarily on stand by due to the ongoing virus emergency wants to be useful in the field. The idea comes in November, according to a concept of medicine “From everywhere to everywhere”, capable of bypassing the classic bureaucratic process with the force, intact, of being assisted by professional doctors specialized in the most disparate branches. An opportunity, Lanzani believes, is the one offered by “Solidarity Medicine” in a time when, more than ever, the right to health of the individual must be guaranteed as enshrined in our Charter toarticle 32. Since that November the service has gotten into fifth gear, with doctors who continue to join the team (currently about forty) from all over Italy, some of our Tuscans already in the team and contacts and supposed accessions also coming from the doctors of our city.
“There is essentially a sort of jam in the system – explains Lanzani -: those who contact us often tell us that they are unable to reach their family doctor or a specific specialist, excessively overworked due to the Covid emergency. But even the most generic toll-free numbers are often busy, leaving patients literally at a standstill in situations of real need. At the moment our ‘studio’ is a PC, through which we monitor our own Facebook page, Solidarity Medicine, and a mobile phone: this is how we sort the many requests that reach us from the various specialists who take care of them and get in touch with the patients ”. The phone rings several dozen times a day. On the other end of the line there are first of all people, often devoured by concern for unclear reports, stuck in an incomprehensible medical procedure, suffering from pains of unknown nature that are difficult to sedate, pregnant women whose path in time Covid is marked by a profound loneliness. All subjects who, despite having tried over and over again, are unable to get in touch with those doctors who were their ‘safe havens’ in non-emergency times.
“The current situation has impoverished the health personnel – explains the Dr. Marina Toschi, Umbrian gynecologist in the solidarity medicine team, for forty years in force in a Perugian clinic -. But the general picture was already heavily strained in pre-Covid times, with the result that many services are now reduced to the bone. I decided to join this project because I believe in public health, in that which is indiscriminately at the service of all, regardless of everyone’s private possibilities. It is obvious that web consultancy cannot be one hundred percent exhaustive, in the sense that it cannot fully replace the face-to-face visit, but it is a very valid resource to support those in difficulty, filter and divide what is urgent from what is not. In short, we try to give comfort to that anxiety that is generated in front of a report, help to interpret it, understand if it is really appropriate to go to the hospital, address the woman who is facing a pregnancy for the first time and is assailed by a thousand doubts. This is a sort of proof that telemedicine is a great tool, perhaps not infallible but that allows you to fix many things ”.
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