Recovery plan, Anelli (Fnomceo) at a hearing in the Chamber: “Using funds to bridge inequalities”. And, in the decision-making processes, involve doctors.
“Bridging the health inequalities that still persist in the country: this must be the priority in the use of resources. We must promptly intervene in favor of a revival of the values underlying our health protection system and a renewal of the National Health Service to make it more adequate – in all Italian regions – to the health needs of the population, more accessible to all people”.
This concludes the report that the President of Fnomceo, the National Federation of Orders of Surgeons and Dentists, Filippo Anelli presented, this morning at 10.45, in a hearing before the Social Affairs Commission of the Chamber of Deputies on the Recovery plan.
As? Acting on several fronts: directly, modifying the governance of the National Health Service, revisiting the Essential Levels of Assistance, guaranteeing a greater health offer, reviewing the methods of constitution and distribution of the National Health Fund. And indirectly, at the root of the question, by acting on training and on territorial and hospital assistance.
“Now is the time for action and reconstruction: the commitment of all doctors must be recognized and valued – Rings explained -. Not only by finally adjusting their wages – and their working conditions – to European standards. But also by involving them, as they loudly demand, in the decision-making processes: who, better than a doctor, knows what doctors and patients need for the treatment system to work efficiently, effectively and with quality “.
A system, recalled Anelli, severely tested by the pandemic.
“The Covid pandemic has highlighted and amplified pre-existing shortcomings and gray areas in our National Health Service, the result of decades of linear cuts and policies that saw health and professionals as costs to save on and not as resources to invest in. It mercilessly turned a spotlight on critical issues and shortcomings that were now structural. Shortages of staff, with hospital doctors who had to work shifts of up to 24 hours in a row, in order to manage the patients who continued to flow non-stop. Shortcomings at the building level, with the impossibility, in many hospitals, to separate the ‘dirty’ and ‘clean’ paths. Lack of instruments, of beds, of intensive care ”said Anelli.
“Organizational deficiencies, with family doctors left alone to assist domiciled patients; abandoned to themselves, without protocols, guidelines; without support personnel, without adequate equipment, without oximeters and oxygen cylinders. Without personal protective equipment. Lack of safety, in fact, which have led many doctors to become infected, some to pay for their commitment with their lives ”he continued.
“The doctors who did not make it, who paid with their lives the adherence to the principles of the Code of Medical Deontology and the Oath, passed the threshold of three hundred. Who answered ‘yes’ to a request for help, mindful of that promise to cure everyone, without any discrimination. Even if the masks were not found, if the gloves were gone. This is what happened to our Roberto Stella, who, for Fnomceo, took care of the training of doctors. This is what has happened to many others, to the 105 thousand infected health workers ”he recalled again.
“Despite everything, doctors continued to carry out their work, multiplying the sacrifices and sacrifices: today more than ever we can say, with good reason, that it is they, that they are the professionals and operators, the true connective tissue that has held and maintains the National Health Service. A national health service that, too, was born under other premises and auspices ”he warned.
A lesson, that of Covid which, according to Anelli and Fnomceo, must not go unheard.
“” Worse than this crisis there is only the drama of wasting it “: Pope Francis said, the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, reiterated it. We repeat it once more, today, before this Commission, representing all Italian doctors, ”he said.
“The economic sustainability of the national health service cannot and must not go through a compression of the right to health and can no longer go through the reduction of economic and human resources. We must put an end to the end: leave behind the politics of corporatization of healthcare and the commodification of health – he urged -. We have to start again, rebuild our National Health Service on the principles that inspired its birth: universality, equity, equality. Principles that coincide with the cornerstones of our Code of Medical Ethics: humanity, solidarity, subsidiarity, protection of individual and collective health, without any discrimination, implemented through the protection of the dignity, decorum, independence and quality of the profession. Healthcare cannot be done without doctors ”.
Doctors who, “although misunderstood and not valued, do not lose, in any case, the passion for their profession; for that Profession which is a magic formula, a unique blend made up of knowledge, skills and values: of knowing, knowing how to do, knowing how to be “.
“Doctors have said so many yes, in this pandemic: to patients, to the principles of their Code, of their Oath – concluded President Fnomceo – They said them without hesitation, without thinking for a moment whether to put their interests before the ultimate good of Public health. Now it is time for the Politics to answer yes to their legitimate requests ”.
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