01 November 2025 09:38
The official signing of the agreement for the University Hospital in Cosenza reveals a truth that I have been denouncing, quite isolated, for some time now. It is precisely one of the protagonists of the signature, the rector of Unical Nicola Leone, who revealed it today with a public statement to the local press: “We were able to proceed quickly thanks to rigorous planning and a scientific method”.
With a broader reading: from the birth of the medical faculty in Cosenza, to the moving of the cardiac surgery posts at S.Anna to Cosenza, to the removal of funds for the new hospital in Catanzaro, to the concentration of large public healthcare and university investments in Cosenza, to the substantial killing of healthcare and the university of the regional capital, everything has long spoken of a scientific plan which, however, is revealed to everyone today.
It’s clear: we can no longer talk about parochial claims alone!
At Occhiuto’s inauguration in 2021 in front of the Sanctuary of San Francesco di Paola, Roberto Occhiuto and Nicola Leone closed a unique power agreement, as the rector himself publicly stated, perhaps the two forgot on that occasion that San Francesco is the patron saint of all Calabrians and not of their individual and private “visions”.
To scientifically create this “virtuous” model, it was decided to empty and marginalize other territories, primarily Catanzaro. Because while in Cosenza 855 beds, impressive infrastructures and a further 45 million are announced to transform the Annunziata into a “citadel of health”, on the Pugliese-Ciaccio, on the UMG Polyclinic and on the unfinished Dulbecco which, according to Occhiuto, was supposed to be the largest hospital in the South, a deafening silence essentially falls, outside of planning and resources. On the one hand it speeds up scientifically and on the other it slows down consciously.
Occhiuto opens the legislature as he concluded it: offending territories, citizens and healthcare professionals, dividing Calabria rather than uniting and governing it.
And even more serious, once the electoral campaign is over, is the complicit silence of politics, healthcare and the Catanzaro university, which in the face of this direction and this plan remain, unfortunately, perhaps frightened but certainly silent and immobile. Is it reasonable to think that someone is already treating “professional hospitality” in Cosenza for themselves and their children or relatives? Are the people of Catanzaro right to think so?
The reality is simple: in Calabria, to study medicine, to practice the medical profession with adequate equipment and to get treatment, you will have to go to Cosenza. If you get sick in Catanzaro, Crotone, Vibo or Reggio you’re screwed, you have to die or emigrate to Cosenza.
The progress of all the territories of Calabria is welcome but this is a result built on the skin of Catanzaro, its excellent healthcare community and the Calabrian patients, who deserve respect, fairness, investments, healthcare quality and not planned cancellations and power pacts.
Follow La Nuova Calabria on social media
