San Timoteo Hospital in Termoli © TermoliOnLine
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TERMOLI. He discusses the report by Dr. Urbani, Director General of the Ministry of Health, on the visit of the ministerial inspectors, requested by the Commissioner ad acta Giustini. The report reports the critical issues and serious malfunctions detected by the inspectors in the hospitals (Cardarelli, Veneziale and San Timoteo) and in the Casa della Salute (Vietri). It also recalls what has not been achieved in the project to upgrade the hospital network for Covid, approved by the Ministry, and what else is set out in the decrees of the Commissioner ad acta for the Casa della Salute. The report also contemplates the numerous improvement actions to be implemented to remedy the criticalities identified.
The report indicates managerial inability and inadequacy of the ruling class towards the organization of clinical activities, appropriateness in hospitalizations and efficient care in hospitals. A strongly negative opinion. A resounding rejection that also affects those who, without exception, have proposed and designated them.
Rejection which, however, invests themselves, first of all the central government, considering that for about thirteen years Molise has been deprived of health planning, due to the deficit recovery plan, entrusted to the various Commissioners, politicians (former presidents: Iorio and Frattura) and technicians with the appointment of successive governments. The emergency state in which our regional health service finds itself today depended not only on the inadequacy and inability of those who planned and managed the service, but also on the blocking of staff turnover and on the directives imposed during the years of commissioner still in force, on technicians of the Ministry of Health and Economic Ministry of the infamous Technical Table. This has resulted in staff cuts, reduced health services with the closure of entire wards and downgrading of hospitals. Despite this, the prefixed result of the recovery of the health deficit has still not been achieved today. In fact, despite having the Molise Region contracted other mortgages to be paid by the Molisans to cope with the previous debt, to date a new health debt of over 120 million euros has matured. This shows that in Molise, even with only 300 thousand inhabitants but distributed in 136 poorly connected municipalities, and the low population density, it is not possible to create a health service capable of guaranteeing efficient care to its citizens with the fund assigned by the state, according to the current national benchmarks. It requires an additional fund as was the case in the 2015-2017 three-year period in which at least the management balance was achieved thanks to the solidarity fund of the other regions of 72 million euros.
The advent of Covid has only aggravated and highlighted the critical issues and inefficiencies in health facilities and the discomfort faced by the few staff left on duty. This was well known to all! Only those who did not want to see did not see and those who did not want to hear did not hear the alarms and calls for attention shouted in all these years, primarily by the San Timoteo Committee. Nothing helped!
It has come to the point that, to deal with the Covid emergency, it was necessary to ask for a field hospital (four tents adjacent to the San Timoteo hospital) and staff of the CRI, the intervention of Army doctors, and repeated interventions helicopter rescue to transfer Covid patients to hospitals in other regions.
For our entire ruling class (primarily political, administrative) this is the monument of their failure! It will remain indelible in the memory of the Molisans. How indelible is the memory of the tents of the earthquake of October 2002, with the death of 27 children from San Giuliano di Puglia and their teacher. The earthquake, however, is a natural and unpredictable event, very different from the second wave of Covid that we are experiencing, widely predicted and announced by the scientific world.
Molise appears to be the region that has fewer initiatives to tackle the new wave of the virus, in fact it has not enhanced molecular laboratories, tracing the virus with swabs, rapid serological and antigenic tests, and more. Even less was the implementation of the planned interventions for the improvement of the hospital network for Covid (structures, beds, instrumental equipment, …) by those in charge of the emergency and the regional health service, unlike what other regions have implemented in the established ways and times. The responsibilities of managing this emergency can only fall on the current ruling class in charge.
Now, in addition to immediately implementing the recommendations of the ministerial report, the utmost attention must be paid to the vaccination plan to be implemented, avoiding the repetition of the errors and negligence committed in this emergency.
Getting vaccinated, and immediately, against Covid is essential to stop the pandemic, but it does not make us immortal. For this reason, knowing that one does not suffer and / or die from Covid alone, it is also necessary and soon to put hospitals back in a position to provide care and carry out the programmed hospitalizations of the various specialties, interrupting the lengthening of the waiting lists.
At the same time, the approval of the new POS 2019-2021 is urgent, a task that cannot be postponed anymore, which is up to Commissioner Giustini and is being drafted by Agenas. Programming that respects only objective criteria and the peculiarities of the territories, excluding any form of parochialism, with the strengthening of medicine in the territory and an appropriate hospital network.
As regards the San Timoteo hospital, the only hospital unit remaining in the lower Molise, people continue to ask, at least, to preserve and strengthen the existing departments with health personnel, technological equipment and more, in order to give it back the important health and socio-political role of the past, driving force for the entire regional territory.
Nicola Felice
President of the San Timoteo Committee
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