ALBANIAN SPEZZANO – In the heart of the Esaro Valley, between Spezzano Albanese, Terranova da Sibari, Tarsia and San Lorenzo del Vallo, local healthcare has become a trench. During the hours of the night, or on weekends, when people only rely on the ringing of a telephone, the emergency medical service turns into a mystical experience.
A vast, populous territory, with thousands of inhabitants, is often entrusted to a single doctor, forced to supervise an area that should be covered by at least four stations. It is the perfect image of the failure of Calabrian healthcare, placed under commissionership, immobilized and incapable of guaranteeing the most basic right: that of treatment. The ASP continues to maintain that the service is “guaranteed”, but in the territories that term has lost its meaning. Doctors are now the protagonists of endless shifts, of nights spent managing phone calls that arrive at the same time from countries kilometers away. If they answer an urgent call from Fedula, Spezzano is left exposed without assistance. It is a system that forces those on duty to choose who to help first, an ethical and professional dilemma that should never exist. But this is not all: the medical guards’ offices are often without essential drugs, basic tools, gloves and dressing materials. The rooms are cold, bare, with empty cabinets and a bureaucracy that simply verbalizes the inefficiencies without solving them. Those who should be in charge of supplies, an expected and paid figure, do not seem to carry out their task, and the result is that at night, when a citizen arrives with a high fever or sudden pain, they are told that they have to go to the emergency room. So patients flock to hospitals, worsening the chaos of emergency departments and pushing already exhausted healthcare staff to their limits. 118, meanwhile, is no longer what it once was. The ambulances that serve this area are not medicalised: they travel without a doctor, with only the driver and a rescuer, and in the event of a red code they have to call the emergency medical service. But that same guard is a single doctor, who must leave the office and, if necessary, accompany the patient to the hospital, leaving entire towns without assistance. It is an unacceptable paradox, a chain of errors that has been perpetuated for years before everyone’s eyes. Every emergency, every outage, is punctually followed by a meeting, a technical table, a statement from the ASP. There is talk of “critical issues to be addressed”, of “reorganization in progress”, but in the meantime nothing changes. There are fewer and fewer doctors, increasingly scarce supplies, increasingly emptier ambulances. The commissionership, which was supposed to bring order and efficiency, paralyzed the system. Decisions get lost in the corridors of bureaucracy, while in the Esaro towns the night passes in silence, with people making do as they can. It is a healthcare that only works on paper, which certifies the presence of services that do not exist in reality. The population is exasperated, but accustomed to the worst. For too long he has lived in the belief that nothing will change. Yet, there can be no resignation in the face of a service that should save lives and instead risks losing them. When a doctor works without tools, without colleagues and without support, it is not just an organizational problem, it is an ethical and institutional failure. Who is responsible for all this? Who checks that the studios are stocked, that the stations are active, that the ambulances are equipped? The answer is always the same: nobody. Everyone knows, no one acts. And so, every night, the right to treatment is put on hold, replaced by a system that is based on the goodwill of a few doctors and the patience of citizens left alone. As long as this state of affairs continues, the word “health service” will remain a lie written on a stamp. In these lands, medical assistance is not a guaranteed right, but a fortune that depends on chance. And no institution can afford to call it a “public service” anymore.
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