AGI – It was “the slowness and lack of sensitivity of the Italians who see strategic plans as term papers, bibliographic works” that wrecked the project of a new pandemic plan launched in August 2018 with a ‘Note’ sent by email from Directorate-General for Health Prevention of the Ministry of Health to the then Minister Giulia Grillo in which it was explicit “the need to prepare a new national pandemic preparedness and response plan “. A source from the Ministry who prefers to remain anonymous and who attended all stages of the failed plan process, one of the aspects at the center of the investigation by the Bergamo Public Prosecutor’s Office on the management of Covid, tells the AGI.
The meeting with WHO experts, then the stop
In recent days, the Deputy Minister of Health, Pierpaolo Sileri, he asked for the resignation of some executives of the Ministry accused with their “sloppiness” of having kept the Plan ‘still’ in 2006. The magistrates also have this ‘Note’ in their file which shows that already in 2017 a similar “need” the previous minister Beatrice Lorenzin was notified to draw up a planning document.
In September 2018, the source says, a technical meeting was organized with the WHO experts called to the Ministry to clarify what were the guidelines for starting: “From these it emerged that the pandemic was not considered only a health problem, but of the whole society, therefore the problem had to be shared with other ministries, such as that of the Interior and Transport, with the social forces, with Inail, Aifa, workers in the health sector ”.
Then, again according to the indications of the World Health Organization, “it was necessary to think about more advanced statistical and mathematical models and the criticality of the lack of a communication plan pandemic. In fact, we have seen what happened without it ”.
“Region, family doctors and pharmacists overdue”
It is here that, according to this testimony, the path of the new Plan runs aground. “With difficulty – he continues – by March it is possible to have the names to form the groups. In April, the principles on which they must work are established ”.
We arrive in the summer of 2019, then “in September an international meeting is called to do a pandemic drill. People come from all over the world and in a couple of days the formal and technical aspects are completed ”.
At this moment there is a draft of the Plan, on which each working group is called to send its contributions to the Ministry of Health but in January 2019 “those of the Regions, family doctors and pharmacists “. The rest is recent history. The flu plan remains that of 2006 which, in any case, says the source, “It would not have served for Covid_19 which is a disease that is treated differently from the flu “.
According to the Committee of the victims’ families and the first reports, still in progress, of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Italy should have updated the Plan by acknowledging the multiple indications coming from the WHO, preparing a series of measures, such as the expansion of terapie intensive, which would also have helped in the fight against Covid_19. What is certain is that a plan for the ‘Prevention and response to Covid_19’ arrives only at the end of September.
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