The new general director of the ASL, Paolo Costanzi, does not lack optimism and the desire to do things, but yesterday was a difficult visit for him. Because despite the sun and the warm temperatures of this anomalous November, in these hours a “perfect storm” has hit the healthcare system of Abruzzo and Peligna in particular.
There’s no time to reassure us about the short arrival of fourteen new vehicles supplied to the ASL, when a new complaint has arrived on the desk of the Sulmona public prosecutor’s office. Presenting it is a lawyer from Sulmona who, the other evening, was forced to rent a private ambulance to transfer her ten-year-old son to Pescara. The two ambulances available to the Sulmona hospital, after i package of those who were there, both were in fact busy.
The child, who had been suffering from a high fever for weeks, had to be urgently transferred to Pescara: a code red which, however, arrived at its destination four hours late and only after the parents rented a private vehicle, driven, ironically, by the child’s father who is the 118 driver.
The mother, who was not allowed to get on board, vents: “The entire management showed critical issues and it is paradoxical that, for a ten-year-old child, there were no ambulances available. We also had to cover the cost of petrol. It is a story that should make those who talk about healthcare reflect – comments the mother-lawyer – even during the hospitalization there was no unequivocal treatment among the paediatricians who followed one another. Until there was nothing left but to arrange an emergency transfer. An emergency, a red code arrived at its destination four hours late.”
The episode adds to that of the ambulance breaking down on the motorway last Wednesday, to the case of the old woman, who died yesterday, bouncing between the emergency room and surgery for the application of a feeding tube, to the crazy files that caused protests from users, to the chronic shortage of staff and to the logistical problems between offices located in illegal garages and the wait for the new structure which will have to host, hopefully in spring, the Cup and the services currently hosted by the Comboni Missionaries.
A “perfect storm” whose cumulonimbus clouds had evidently been present for some time.
