Parents of children suffering from neuropsychomotor deficit and/or language delay, who have been assigned rehabilitation care, are forced to wait approximately three years before seeing their loved ones placed in a rehabilitation facility in order to receive the care that the case requires.
Thus their cry of pain due to discouragement and discouragement becomes ever deeper – which more often than not borders on a sense of abandonment by the institutions.
Three years: these are the times patients must wait before being included in rehabilitation treatment at the facilities affiliated with ASP n. 2 of Caltanissetta.
All this despite the operational plan prepared by the President of the Sicilian Region Renato Schifani aimed at reducing waiting lists and prepared by the Regional Council which approved the document prepared by the Regional Department of Health, in which an intervention strategy is outlined to dispose of the waiting lists as quickly as possible.
The ambitious plan approved by the Regional Council in 2023 which even envisaged “the elimination” of waiting lists, both for the public service and the affiliated private one, was defined by the President of the Region himself as “one of the cornerstones of its government program”.
To put it in the words of the Regional Health Councilor, with the plan to eliminate waiting lists, “a system will be implemented that will allow us to no longer find ourselves in situations of hardship for which citizens above all pay the price”.
And to pay the price, due to the long waiting lists at the ASP n. 2 of Caltanissetta Gela Rehabilitation District, are those families who are forced to wait up to 36 months before their child can be included in rehabilitation treatment at the Borgo Manfria Rehabilitation Center to receive the rehabilitation benefits to which they are entitled. With all due respect to the immediacy of the rehabilitation intervention especially for young children, in total disregard of the right to health enshrined in art. 32 of our Constitution which thus remains only a statement of principle as an end in itself and not a right that cannot (and must not) “bend” to budgetary needs or, even worse, to political choices regarding the allocation of funds .
Acting as a spokesperson for the cry of pain that comes from the numerous families who inquire daily at the offices of the Rehabilitation Center asking for information on the entry of their family members to receive rehabilitation treatment, the AIAS Gela Section hopes for an authoritative intervention from the President of Sicilian Region as well as the Regional Health Councilor at the ASP n. 2 of Caltanissetta to put an end to the unfortunate situation which sees family members of disabled people forced, especially parents of young children, to wait up to three years before their loved ones can receive the rehabilitation therapies to which they are entitled .
