BRINDISI – The diagnostic and therapeutic management of sexually transmitted diseases was at the center of a conference organized by the ASL Brindisi at the headquarters of the Port Authority. After the institutional greetings of the general director of the ASL, Maurizio De Nuccio, of the parliamentarian Mauro D’Attis, of the regional health councilor, Rocco Palese, who spoke via videoconference, the meeting between the experts was moderated by the health director Vincenzo Gigantelli and the administrative director Loredana Carulli.
The undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, Marcello Gemmato, unable to participate, in a letter addressed to the general director expressed appreciation for the choice of the theme, deeming it “more necessary than ever to update a regulatory system from many years ago, without dispersing the wealth of knowledge and scientific evidence established so far, but exploiting it to imagine new paths for managing pathologies which today, fortunately, have treatments capable of combating them”.
The speakers, brought together by the director of the Infectious Diseases department at Perrino Salvatore Minniti, also the scientific director of the event, took stock of the spread and fight against sexually transmitted diseases, with particular reference to AIDS, a pathology far from being eliminated and from which we must defend ourselves with prevention.
In the audience, in addition to health workers and representatives of voluntary orders and associations, there were also students from some high school classes.
For Minniti “today’s event was particularly important because it brings sexually transmitted diseases back to the center of attention, which are a rapidly growing phenomenon, as we can see in our clinics. The day was an opportunity for healthcare workers, administrators, political decision makers and young people to meet. The large participation of high school students is meritorious: they are mainly the recipients of correct information on sexual education. HIV is not as deadly as it was in the nineties but once you contract the disease you have it forever: for this reason it is essential to protect yourself by adopting responsible behaviour.”
“The topic of AIDS, HIV and sexually transmitted diseases – said parliamentarian Mauro D’Attis – was taken up again in the last legislature and in this one, thanks to a bill of which I am the first signatory and rapporteur, combined with those presented by other colleagues. It is necessary to innovate the tools to combat these pathologies by focusing on the culture of prevention: it is good that events like this are organized with the involvement of health workers and young people from schools”.
Stefano Vella, professor of Global Health at the Catholic University of Rome, underlined that “HIV was born global and still is. AIDS has caused 40 million deaths worldwide and there are approximately 40 million people with HIV. Thanks to drugs we can live better, but the problem, as at the beginning, is for developing countries: in Africa, for example, we have one and a half million new infections a year. We have managed to bring medicines even to the poorest areas, thanks to the Global Fund, but there are people who cannot be reached and who are ghettoized because they are homosexuals or drug addicts. We remind young people that the disease still exists and that even in Italy we have a certain number of people who arrive late for treatment because they don’t worry about HIV.”
“The Brindisi Local Health Authority – added Rosaria Iardino, president of The Bridge Foundation – had the courage to revisit the topic of sexually transmitted diseases and invite school students. We have fewer and fewer births and we must think of these children who are the adult citizens of tomorrow, taking care of their fragilities. We need to invest in young people with public policies that really manage to change behavior.”
Sergio Lo Caputo, professor of infectious diseases at the Foggia Polyclinic, highlighted that “in the context of the management of this type of disease, networks are a fundamental problem. Networking means bringing people together, training professionals to design training projects and solve problems related to prevention, health education, therapy and research. We saw for HIV in the nineties and recently during Covid how important the concept of the network was. Administrations are not always able to keep up with the times from an organizational point of view: infectious diseases are characterized by great speed and versatility. The more we can prevent, the more successful we will be.”
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