His story also moved Elly Schlein. In 2023, the secretary of the Democratic Party was moved by the candidacy for the municipal council of Torre del Greco by Pasqualino Imperato, an ALS patient, «the regional Democratic Party leadership had already defined other agreements». But Imperato doesn’t give up and wants to continue the fight to guarantee equal assistance to ALS patients throughout Italy. Pasqualino Imperato former surveyor, at the time of his ALS diagnosis he was 35 years old. Suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, he denounces the lack of assistance faced by hundreds of patients who have the same diagnosis as him and live in Campania.
Pasqualino is tracheostomized and interacts with others only through an ocular communicator. Graduating in Economics and Commerce at the Parthenope University of Naples, he did some calculations on how much his pathology costs the Health Service. From a recent analysis, the average annual cost for a patient suffering from ALS is between €65,000 and €75,000. The disease usually begins around the age of 60 and, in inherited cases, about ten years earlier. The average survival from onset to death can vary from three to four years; approximately 10% survive more than 10 years, while 5% reach or exceed 20 years from diagnosis. Most die from respiratory failure. In much of the world, ALS rates are unknown. In Europe the illness it affects approximately 2 people per 100,000 individuals per year.
The Campania region has approximately 600 sick people, 10 of whom are in the municipality of Torre del Greco. Pasquale Imperato addresses the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni asking to be received, the President of the Campania Region Vincenzo De Luca, as well as the Minister of Disability Antonella Locatelli. «I ask – writes Imperato – that also in my city, for the patients of the ASL Napoli 3 Sud, the dedicated fund for patients with ALS and rare pathologies be activated, as happens in Friuli Venezia Giulia, where I lived for thirteen years. The ASL Naples 3 south, led by the general director Giuseppe Russo, it has done so much for me, it is not enough for the patients afflicted by this devastating pathology. In fact, the ASL officials do not want to prescribe an ocular communicator that would give me the possibility of interacting externally, as the regional company that deals with the procurement of health facilities (Soresa) is not present in the tender. The ocular communicator that several sick people already have is the Tobii Dynavox Series I (TDI 16), designed for ALS patients. We ALS sufferers from the municipality of Torre del Greco ask to live a dignified quality of life I am trying – concludes Imperato – to stand as a candidate in the next regional elections in Campania, to make everyone aware of the enormous difficulties of us suffering from ALS”.
